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 headline show at the Gold Coast Convention Centre, Broadbeach, Australia.

The anger of Obadiah

IBF cruiserweight champion Opetaia (26-0, 20 KOs) moved from 1 to 10 on the anger scale when it comes to challenger Nyika (10-0, 9 KOs) who has the nerve to say he wanted a “dog fight” on wednesday I don’t know why it bothers Opetaia so much that Nyika thinks she will win. The only conclusion I can come to is that it is unsafe.

Opetaia’s eyes went wild and her blood pressure seemed to boil. If they put a BP fist on it, I would expect it to be 180/120 in danger level. You could tell he’s not used to his opponents wanting to go to war with him.

Most are very scared, but not Nyika. He has spotted a weakness in Opetaia and has the power, ring IQ and 6’6″ size to take advantage.

Opetaia vs Nyika can be seen 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 cracker, and now I’m packing stadiums. It’s crazy the journey I’ve made”, said Jai Opetaia The Stomping Groundtalking about how quickly it has become popular.

“We just keep moving forward. We don’t look back. Any of these guys that try to take us from 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. leave me out It’s going to be the best sleep I’ve had in years since my surgeries,” Jai said of Nyika using post-it notes, talking about her goal of knocking him out.

“I expect a tough fight. He’s a good creative fighter, and he’s smart in this ring. He keeps talking about wanting a dogfight. Let’s have it, but he knows that. He’s going to have to fight smart. He doesn’t want to get beat Whatever comes out, we have to adapt to it”, said Opetaia.

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

The “sleep” guarantee.

“He is a high orthodox. He has a strange style, but he uses it well. We can cut it. I can hurt this guy. He keeps talking about a dog fight, but if I hit this guy, he’s going to sleep, I guarantee it. So how much of a dogfight does he want to have? said Opetaia.

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

You can tell that Jai looks up to former WBA 175-pound champion Bivol, but his fighting style is very similar when under attack. Other than that, Opetaia is a different fighter because he’s not a puncher like him. Focuses primarily on left hand loading.

We saw it work well for Jai in his recent fights against Jack Massey, Ellis Zorro and Jordan Thompson. Neither of these guys are top level fighters in the truest 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. He was getting lit up by the former champion and took a lot of punishment to the face. In the last fight, he looked unrecognizable because Briedis hit him with shots that turned him into a Halloween mask.