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Jay Opetaia predicts he will “hurt” David Niek and “put him to sleep” on Wednesday night in their headliner at the Gold Coast Convention Centre, Broadbeach, Australia.
Avdi’s wrath
IBF heavyweight champion Opetaia (26-0, 20 KOs) retired from 1 to 10 on the anger scale when talking about challenger Niik (10-0, 9 KOs) who had the nerve to say he wanted “dog fight” on Wednesday. I don’t know why Opetaya is so bothered that Niika believes she will win. The only conclusion I can come to is that it is insecure.
Opetaya went wild and looked like his blood pressure was boiling. If they had put a blood pressure cuff on him, I would have expected 180/120 to be dangerous. One could say that he is not used to his opponents wanting to go to war with him.
Most of them are so scared, but not Niika. He spotted a weakness in Opetaja, and has the power, IQ and 6’6″ size to exploit.
Opetaia vs. Niik will be shown live on DAZN this Wednesday, January 8th. 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 filling stadiums.” It’s a crazy journey I’ve been on,” said Jay Opetaia The Stomping Groundtalking about how quickly he became popular.
“We just keep moving forward.” We don’t look back. “Any of these guys that are trying 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 Niika using post-it notes, talking about his goal to knock him out.
“I expect a tough fight. He’s a good, creative fighter, and he’s smart in that ring. He keeps talking about wanting a dogfight. Let’s have him, but he knows. He will have to fight smart. 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% ready. Niika has a plan to follow using the pressure tactics and hard hitting that Mairis Briedis used successfully to give Opetaja real hell in their rematch last year on May 18. Jai probably prefers to forget that fight, but Niika. He is using it for learning purposes and will look to duplicate and improve on the success the Latvian has had.
“Sleep” guarantee.
“He is a tall Orthodox. He has a strange style about him, but he uses it well. We can rip it off. I can fucking hurt this guy. He keeps talking about dog fighting, but if I hit this guy, he’ll fall asleep, I guarantee it. So how many dogfights does he want to have?” Opetaia said.
Niika could surprise Opetaia with his power and the dog in him as he comes to turn this fight into a full scale war on Wednesday night. Opetaia is a bigger version of Dmitri Bivol and doesn’t like it when someone fires back at him. It’s good when he unloads his bombs, but as soon as he comes back, he goes into his Buffalo mode.
You can tell Jai admires former WBA 175lb champion Buffalo, but his fighting style is very similar when he’s on the receiving end. Plus, Opetaia is a different fighter because he’s not a combination puncher like him. It mainly focuses on charging the left hand.
We’ve seen it well for Jai in his recent fights against Jack Massey, Ellis Zorro and Jordan Thompson. None of those guys are major leaguers in the truest sense, which is why Opetaia dominated them with just his left hand.
What he couldn’t get over was in two fights with Mairis Briedis. He was lit up by the former champion and took a lot of punishment to the face. In the last fight, he looked unrecognizable as Briedis hit him with several shots that turned him into a Halloween mask.
