Just as cruiserweights don’t have to look too far or too hard for their pot of gold, nor do they have to look too far or too hard for both their template and inspiration. The gold can be found at heavyweight, of course, which is where so many cruiserweights end up, while inspiration can be found in the footprints of predecessors; those who excelled at cruiserweight before becoming rich and famous as heavyweights.
These days it is perhaps easier than ever for a cruiserweight to find motivation ahead of embarking on a similar move. Only last year, in fact, they would have seen Oleksandr Usyk, the former cruiserweight king, beat Tyson Fury, the consensus number one heavyweight, not once but twice to replicate his cruiserweight success in boxing’s marquee division. In the process of doing so Usyk would have given no small amount of hope to other cruiserweights aiming to one day do the same. To both Fury, his opponent, and all the cruiserweights he left behind, Usyk showed that size is not everything and proved that if a cruiserweight can carry their speed and agility up from the 200-pound division, there is every chance they can cause trouble among bigger men.
Next week in Australia, Jai Opetaia, the IBF cruiserweight champion, makes the fourth defense of his belt against David Nyika, a 29-year-old whose frame – six feet six, 78-inch reach – is that of a heavyweight more so than your typical cruiserweight. Opetaia, for his part, is at 6 ‘2 not considered a particularly big cruiserweight, yet so great is his ability and ambition there is already talk of him eventually ending up as a heavyweight when the well at cruiserweight inevitably runs dry. So far, the Australian has defended his belt against Jordan Thompson and Jack Massey. He was stripped by the IBF for fighting Ellis Zorro rather than Briedis again, but Opetaia eventually got back in with the Latvian and won the vacant title. But there is a feeling now that the aggressive southpaw will need bigger and better tests in the future. Indeed, even this next fight against Nyika, an unheralded prospect born in New Zealand but based in Australia, is happening only because Opetaia’s mandatory challenger, Huseyin Cinkara, withdrew from the same opportunity due to an injury. In stepped Nyika to fill the void, but Opetaia, though grateful to have a fight, will know this is far from a defining fight. Nyika, at 10-0, is far too green for it to ever be that. The odds lean too heavily in Opetaia’s favour for it to ever be that.
For his defining fight, Opetaia will maybe look towards Gilberto Ramirez, the owner of the WBA and WBO belts, later this year. Who knows, he may even need to jettison cruiserweight altogether and follow Usyk’s lead and venture to heavyweight at some point. There, at heavyweight, Opetaia would be walking the path paved not only by Usyk, but also the likes of David Haye and Evander Holyfield, both of whom won heavyweight belts after initially thriving as cruiserweights. He would be undersized, of course, yet, much like Usyk, potentially able to capitalise on his mobility and high output in the presence of larger and more cumbersome men. Better yet, with Usyk soon to turn 38, and with many of the other top heavyweights of a similar age, there is a chance Opetaia could get the timing of this move – if it is a move he should elect to make – just right. Either way, a move to heavyweight will, as it always does, guarantee one thing: heftier paydays.
Then again, fame and fortune has never been the driving force for Jai Opetaia, one senses. It has its appeal, as it does for any professional boxer, but a man like Opetaia has many other reasons for fighting, too. In fact, one glance at his admittedly brief reign at cruiserweight and you’ll see the workings of a champion who is eager to just fight, regardless of the calibre of opposition. Since he won his IBF belt against Brieidis in July 2022, Opetaia has fought four times and made quick work of just about everybody other than Briedis. He would have fought many more times as well had it not been for a jaw injury he suffered in that first battle with Briedis which required three implants in his jaw and a period of healing.
His ability to continue fighting with this injury, and later recover from it, is a testament to Opetaia’s mental strength and inherent toughness. You see this on display whenever he fights, but you also hear it in his voice whenever he speaks.
“I’ve always had that mental toughness to get s**t done,” he told me last year. “Breaking my jaw and coming back is no big thing. I’m still here. I’ll break it again and I’ll be sweet again. It doesn’t matter.”
Not just able to find positives among debris and damage, Opetaia even went so far as to say he was all the better for having broken his jaw. He now felt tougher, he said, both mentally and physically, and suggested that on account of the bone in his jaw calcifying it had become even stronger and made him, the one who takes the punches, somehow harder to hurt; harder to break.
Added to all this, Opetaia, at 29, knows he has come too far now, and sacrificed too much, to be anything other than resolute and determined.
“I’m sacrificing every day – time away from my family, all my good days – just to be in the gym,” he said. “All the celebrations, birthdays, weddings, I spent them in the f**king gym. And then what? That’s where the mental toughness comes from, bro. It’s all the sacrifices I have had to make to do what I need to do. It’s not an option. Otherwise, it’s all for f**king nothing.
“This is my f**king ticket out of this s**thole of a stressful life. I wouldn’t say being a kid fighting grown men made me fearless – because everybody has that fear and doubt in the back of their head – but it helped me know what to do with it. You don’t f**king listen to it, do you? You just keep on going.”
Although now very much “going”, there was a time not long ago when Opetaia, 26-0 (20), considered retiring from the sport due to the severity of his injuries. Hand surgery had kept him out for a total of nine months and it was during this dark period he put on a lot of weight and wondered whether the mental and physical pain of a comeback was worth the eventual reward. Twelve months later, however, he was a world champion. “But I know those dark places are not gone,” he confessed. “I’ll probably fall down them again in the future and I’ll also climb back out of them again. We’ve been there before. It’s f**king life.”
If nothing else, Opetaia’s experience on the ledge gives him a newfound perspective and a greater awareness of what it is to both win and lose. Like so many, he will claim and believe he has faced bigger and scarier opponents than the ones with whom he trades punches on fight night and he will believe, too, that even a move to heavyweight, should that be his fate, leads to no scarier a place than some of the other dark places he has inhabited in recent years.
“My biggest enemy is myself,” Opetaia said. “I can do whatever I push myself to do but sometimes you find yourself stuck in those little deep holes. I’ve had to drag myself out of those holes a few times over the years, especially with these injuries and the road back. It’s f**king lonely, bro. There’s nobody there to hold your hand and do it for you. You’re by yourself. Your coaches are there in the gym, yeah, but, f**k, when you go through these lonely roads, all you see are dark holes up ahead.
“Now, though, having got past all that, you can’t hurt me. The physical pain is an escape.”
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