Jai Opetaia is targeting the winner of Saturday’s unification cruiserweight title fight between Gilberto Ramirez and Chris Billam-Smith.
“Zurdo” and Billam-Smith contest their respective WBA and WBO titles at the Kingdom Arena in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, aware that Australia’s Opetaia remains most widely regarded as their division’s number one.
Opetaia has been particularly vocal about his hopes of fighting the popular 34-year-old Billam-Smith, and having so recently stopped Jack Massey to defend his IBF and Ring Magazine titles hopes that should the Englishman succeed against Ramirez, 33 and of Mexico, they will finally fight in 2025.
“That’s a good fight,” Opetaia told BoxingScene. “Fucking Billam-Smith – he’s a tough bastard; keeps walking forward. He’s made a couple of upsets, his last couple of fights [he defeated Richard Riakporhe in June]. Everyone was writing him off, but he’s got the will to win.
“Ramirez, he’s a good southpaw; he boxes really well. He’s got a lot of experience. He’s been in the ring with [Dmitry] Bivol, and great fighters, so it’s a good fight.
“We’ve got a mandatory after this one, and then we’ll get the unification fight, hopefully.
“I don’t care about the fucking big build-ups and all this. Just fight. You already got a belt. I already got two belts. I’ve got the most string-pull out of all the cruiserweights. I feel like everyone should be fighting for the Ring Magazine Jai Opetaia quashes talk of vendettas, he just wants to clean out his division. Whoever’s got that is the top dog. I’ve got it. You know what I mean? It is what it is. I’ve just gotta keep winning – these fights will come.
“It was an easy fight to make ages ago. It’s always been an easy fight to make. The only ones who were making it hard was them. So, who knows?
“I just always get asked about it. It’s the name Billam-Smith – I don’t care about Billam-Smith. It’s not like I’m chasing him as an individual. I believe he’s a good dude; he’s a good fighter. But I just want the belts. It’s not like a personal vendetta towards one of these fighters – it’s just if I’m not fighting for unification fights then I’m only maintaining what I have, and that’s not what we want to do. We don’t want to maintain – we want to progress and move forwards.”
The expectation that the light heavyweights Artur Beterbiev and Dmitry Bivol are destined for a rematch, when previously there had been speculation about potential moves to cruiserweight, has contributed to Opetaia’s increased focus on Ramirez-Billam-Smith.
When he described the fight with Billam-Smith as “easy to make” he had been asked if his rival’s presence on a promotion overseen by the General Entertainment Authority had made their match-up easier to achieve, because Opetaia has consistently fought on dates they have financed.
He was also asked about the value of their interest in a weight division that is typically overlooked, and he responded: “I don’t want to toot my own horn but I feel like I’m a big fucking reason why. We’ve built this division, not by myself – but me, from my neck of the woods, and then you’ve got all the Pommies [Englishmen] from their neck of the woods, and then The Sheikh taking a liking to my style and bringing me on to these cards.
“It’s been a big process. Even when [Oleksandr] Usyk [was the world’s leading cruiserweight] there wasn’t much hype around it, because they were all Europeans – they couldn’t really speak English, so it was hard to sell for the big American [audiences] and the main events and stuff like that. Because they’re unsellable [to wider audiences], you know what I mean? I think that’s just right timing as well. I honestly feel everything’s happening for a reason.
“I’ve dedicated my life to this sport. I’m born and raised and moulded for this sport. I have never, ever done anything else, bar box. Everything is happening at the right time, for the right purpose, and I feel like I’m meant to be here, and everything that’s happening is all through the labour of people’s hard work, and you’ve got to give it to His Excellency [Turki Alalshikh] for building up the sport.
“But us athletes have been ready for the opportunities; it’s not an accident that all these fighters are here. We’ve done the hard yards, and now that the opportunity’s here, we all get the fruits of the labour, because we’ve done the hard work.”
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