Hearn: Opetaia will conquer cruiserweight and challenge Usyk for heavyweight titles

A Matchroom promoter, Eddie Hearn, said tonight that IBF cruiserweight champion Jai Opetaia will “pick up all the belts at cruiserweight” and then move on to fight Oleksandr Usyk at heavyweight to become the champion indisputable.

Opetaia (27-0, 21 KOs) crushed his challenger David Nyika (10-1, 9 KOs), knocking him out in the fourth round tonight at the Gold Coast Convention Centre, Broadbeach, in Queensland, Australia. Referee David Fields waved it off after Nyika was crushed by a left hand from Opetaia. That was the second knockdown in the fourth round.

Hearn’s master plan

“I think David Nyika will be world champion in the future, but not tonight. He came up with the best fighter, not just in Australia, but one of the best fighters in the world in Jai Opetaia,” promoter Eddie Hearn said. inside the ring after Obadiah’s victory.

“This is a guy (Jai) who should be ranked pound for pound. A great future ahead. Jai is humble enough not to mention Oleksandr Usyk’s name, but I’m not. “That’s my job,” Hearn continued.

“Jai is going to get all the cruiserweight belts to become undisputed, and then we want to push him into a fight against Oleksandr Usyk to try to become undisputed at heavyweight as well. “I think he is the only one who can give Oleksandr Usyk a real fight, but to do that, we first have to get all the belts in the cruiserweight division,” Hearn said.

There are still many doubts about whether Opetaia will go as far as fighting Usyk for his heavyweight titles. To get this far, Jai must beat WBA and WBO cruiserweight champion Gilberto ‘Zurdo’ Ramírez (47-1, 30 KOs), and he may lose that fight. If victorious, he would still need to defeat WBC champion Badou Jack, which won’t be easy.

Next stop: unification

Beating Zurdo will require some changes to Opetaia’s fighting style because this guy is smart, powerful, and an excellent fighter. As we saw tonight, Jai can’t fight a lick inside and is very, very normal. Ramirez’s bread and butter is fighting on the inside, and his punch volume is the best in the cruiserweight division. Above all, he is smart.

“I have been pursuing these unification struggles. “I’m going for my belts,” Opetaia said tonight when asked if he would be interested in fighting a unification against Gilberto ‘Zurdo’ Ramírez in ‘three or four months, if His Excellency (Turki Al-Shiekh) can make the next fights. his fourth-round knockout victory over David Nyika.