Is Opetaia vulnerable to Nyika’s power? The champion shows signs of pressure

Jai Opetaia predicts he will “hurt” David Nyika and “put him to sleep” on Wednesday night at his headliner at the Gold Coast Convention Centre, Broadbeach, Australia.

The wrath of Obadiah

IBF cruiserweight champion Opetaia (26-0, 20 KOs) went from 1 to 10 on the anger scale when talking about challenger Nyika (10-0, 9 KOs) having the nerve to say he wanted a “dogfight” On Wednesday. I don’t know why Opetaia is so upset that Nyika thinks she’s going to win. The only conclusion I can come to is that it is unsafe.

Opetaia’s jaw dropped and his blood pressure seemed to be boiling. If they had put a blood pressure cuff on him, I would expect him to have a danger level of 180/120. You can tell he’s not used to his opponents wanting to go to war with him.

Most of them are very scared, but Nyika is not. He’s spotted a weakness in Opetaia and has the power, ring IQ, and 6’6″ size to exploit.

Opetaia vs. Nyika will air live on DAZN this Wednesday, January 8. This will be Jai’s fourth defense of the IBF cruiserweight title he won in 2022.

“Two years ago I didn’t have a single cookie and now I’m filling stadiums. The journey I have taken is crazy,” Jai Opetaia told The playing fieldtalking about how quickly it has become popular.

“We continue to move forward. We don’t look back. If any of these guys try to take us off the top, we have to put them in their place, and that’s what I want to do,” Opetaia continued. “I just want to fight. Knock me out. It’s going to be the best sleep I’ve had in years since my surgeries,” Jai said of Nyika’s use of sticky notes, speaking of her goal to knock him out.

“I expect a tough fight. He is a good, creative fighter and is intelligent in that ring. He keeps talking about wanting a dog fight. Let’s have it, but he knows it. You will have to fight intelligently. He doesn’t want to be hit. Whatever comes out, that’s what we have to adapt to,” Opetaia said.

It could be a tougher fight than Jai expects and he will have to be 100% prepared. Nyika has a plan going forward as she uses the pressure tactics and power punches that Mairis Briedis successfully used to give Opetaia hell in their rematch last year on May 18. Jai would probably prefer to forget about that fight, but Nyika. He is using it for study purposes and will look to duplicate and improve on the success the Latvian had.

The guarantee of the “dream”

“He is a high Orthodox. He has a strange style, but he uses it well. We can trim it. I can hurt this guy. He keeps talking about a dog fight, but if I hit this guy, he’ll fall asleep, I guarantee it. So how much of a dog fight do you want to have? Opetaia said.

Nyika could surprise Opetaia with her power and the dog inside her because she is coming to turn this fight into a full-scale war on Wednesday night. Opetaia is a bigger version of Dmitry Bivol, and he doesn’t like it when he has someone return fire at him. He’s fine when he’s the one unloading his bombs, but as soon as he comes back, he goes into his Bivol mode.

Jai is noted to admire former WBA 175-pound champion Bivol, but their fighting style is very similar when under attack. Other than that, Opetaia is a different fighter because he is not a combination puncher like him. He focuses primarily on carrying with his left hand.

We saw that work well for Jai in his recent fights against Jack Massey, Ellis Zorro and Jordan Thompson. None of those guys are top-level fighters in the true sense, which is why Opetaia dominated them with just his left hand.

Where he couldn’t overcome it was in his two fights with Mairis Briedis. The former champion turned it on and took a lot of punishment in the face. In the last fight he did not look recognizable because Briedis shot him a few times that turned him into a Halloween mask.