Jai Tapuloa Opetaia vs. Giuseppe Claudio Squeo

I do follow boxing. I mentioned a long trend of fighting bums. Apparently you also think the best opponent Jai could find was an italian ranked 73rd in the word, and everyone ranked between number 1 and 73 is ducking him. Cool.

 

It was a stay-busy fight before he fights in October / November / December on a Riyadh Season card. Not his fault the other champions didn’t want to unify against him despite being offered Saudi money.

 

Well looking at opetaia and the level he is operating at, to me he seems to be the best cruiserweight since usyk and way better than zurdo for example. I would make him the overwhelming favorite against any other cruiserweight and never bet against him.

Still I have to admit the recent opponents were underwhelming to the point that how the nyika fight ended was unwatchable and I had the feeling opetaia was trying to finish this one less brutally on purpose (going to the body when basically all his punches to the head hit squeo in the first round already while opetaia was still out of reach - there was no other real reason for him not to go all out).

I assume the management does not want to pay the big bucks potential opponents would demand. And probably it's the correct choice because I assume the revenue would not rise by the same amount just because opetaia got #8 or something to fight him.

This hurts opetaia by not getting the recognition he could get and making it harder to negotiate for the top fights.

Sadly this way boxing politics again reach a point where everyone including the fans have to cry for the Prince to save the day, making ourselves and boxing a little bit more of his subjects everytime that happens. But at least we get some of the fights, boxing politics would otherwise not give us.

 

Btw this is also why I think undisputed is overrated as a way to judge a fighter. The only thing keeping opetaia from being undisputed is the opportunity. Usyk was lucky that the tournament happened then, otherwise who knows if all of them would have fought him...

 

The sooner he bashes the living crap out of Zurdo and moves up to HW, the better. He’s light years ahead of every other CW and I don’t want to see him literally kill Badou Jack.

Bivol or Berbiev would hold some interest but he’s too big and too strong for both of them. However, they are at least legitimate names he can stick on his CV.

I hope he doesn’t waste his time at Bridgerweight.

 

Jai cracked the poor blokes chin like a crema bruciata.

 

If no zurdo a bivol fight sounds interesting