Jay Obitaya predicts he will “hurt” David Nica and “put him to sleep” on Wednesday night at their headline show at the Gold Coast Convention Centre, Broadbeach, Australia.
Obadiah was angry
IBF cruiserweight champion Opetaia (26-0, 20 KOs) is gone. 1 to 10 On the anger scale when talking about challenger Nika (10-0, 9 KOs) who has the audacity to say he wants ““fight violently” Wednesday. I don't know why he bothers Obitaya so much that Nikka thinks he's going to win. The only conclusion I can come to is that it is not safe.
Obitaya became angry and it seemed like his blood pressure was boiling. If they put a pressure limit on him, I would expect him to be 180/120 at risk level. You can tell he's not used to his opponents wanting to go to war with him.
Most of them are very afraid, but not Nika. He's spotted a weakness in Opetaia, and he has the strength, round IQ, and 6'6″ size to take advantage of it.
Opetaia vs. Nyika is live on DAZN on Wednesday, January 8. This will be Jay's fourth defense of the IBF cruiserweight title, which he won in 2022.
“Two years ago, I didn't have crackers, and now I'm packing stadiums. The journey I've been on has been crazy,” Jay Opitaya said. Trampling groundtalks about how quickly he became famous.
“We just keep moving forward. We don't look back. Any of these guys that try to take us from 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. Kick me out. “It's going to be the best sleep I've had in years since the surgeries,” Jay said of Nika as he used sticky notes, talking about his goal of knocking 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 to fight dogs. Let's get it, but he knows. He's going to have to fight smart. He doesn't want to get beaten. Whatever comes out comes out,” Obitaya said. “This is what we have to adapt to.”
The fight might be tougher than Jay expects, and he has to be 100% ready. Nyika has a blueprint to follow with the pressure tactics and hard punches that Mairis Briedis successfully used to give Opetaia pure hell in their rematch last year on May 18. Jay might prefer to forget that fight, but Nika. He is using it for study purposes and will be looking to replicate and improve on the Latvian's success.
Guaranteed “sleep”.
“He's a tall orthodox. He's got a weird style about him, but he uses it well. We can cut him. I can hurt this guy. He keeps talking about dog fighting, but if I hit this guy, he'll fall asleep, I guarantee it. So, how much The dog fight he wants to have?'' Obitaya said.
Nyika Opetaia could surprise with his power and the dog he carries as he is coming to turn this fight into a full-scale war on Wednesday night. Opetaia is a bigger version of Dmitry Bivol, and he doesn't like having someone to return fire to. He's fine when he's the one unloading his bombs, but once he returns, he goes into his Bivol mode.
You can tell that Jay is a fan of former WBA 175-pound champion Bivol, but his fighting style is much the same when he's under attack. Aside from that, Opetaia is a different fighter because he's not a player like him. He mostly focuses on left-handed loading.
We've seen that work well for Jay in his recent fights against Jack Massey, Elis Zorro, and Jordan Thompson. None of these guys are top-tier fighters in the true sense, which is why Obitaya dominated them with his left hand alone.
Where he couldn't get over it was in his two fights with Maires Briedis. The former champion lit him up and took a lot of punishment to his face. In the final fight, he was unrecognizable because Briedis hit him with some shots that turned him into a Halloween mask.
