Boxing Results: Jai Opetaia Stops Jack Massey

IBF cruiserweight champion Jai Opetaia (26-0, 20 KOs) put on an impressive performance, scoring a sixth-round knockout of #10 ranked contender Jack Massey (22-3, 12 KOs) in a voluntary defense on Saturday night at the Kingdom Arena in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.

The fight was stopped at 2:00 of round six after Massey’s trainer threw in the towel. Massey fought passively throughout the fight, appearing afraid to throw punches for fear of being countered by one of the powerful shots from the southpaw Opetaia.

Massey, 31, was getting hit at will by Opetaia from the first round and only rarely throwing anything back in return. When Massey did occasionally hit Opetaia with a good shot, he’d send the champion retreating like a bolt of lightning had hit him.

The 29-year-old Opetaia was uncomfortable with Massey’s shots, but the British fighter didn’t hit him enough to be competitive. It would have been interesting if Massey had gone all out with his offense because Opetaia would freeze for a split second when hit cleanly by him. This suggests that his punch resistance isn’t as good as it needs to be for him to be in wars.

Overall, Opetaia performed much better than in his previous fight against Mairis Briedis on May 18th of this year. In the later rounds of that fight, Opetaia struggled under the 39-year-old Briedis’s pressure, and he started getting busted up by the former champion.

That fight showed that Opetaia does not like to be pressured and doesn’t react well when hit. We saw some of that at times tonight as well, but Massey didn’t provide enough offense to bring out the weakness that Briedis had exposed.

Opetaia wants to fight the winner of tonight’s main event between Artur Beterbiev and Dmitry Bivol. He would stand a good chance of beating Bivol, who can’t punch, but Beterbiev would be a nightmare for him.

Beterbiev would attack relentlessly, butcher Opetaia on the inside, and likely knock him out early. Opetaia showed tonight that he doesn’t have an inside game. He’s strictly an outside bomber with no heart for the give-and-take in a war.