Boxing Preview, July 2nd: Briedis vs Opataia
Photo by DeFodi/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images
A quieter week in boxing after a superb run over the last three months or so, but there’s a couple of points of interest in Australia and the UK, so let’s take a look.
Mairis Briedis vs Jai Opetaia
Cruiserweight
Mairis Briedis has got himself into an odd place in life. Or at least in boxing. He was a key part of a brilliant era of cruiserweight boxing, giving the mighty Oleksandr Usyk the hardest fight of his pro career by far in the first WBSS tournament at the weight and winning the second edition. Since then, almost all his rivals from then have retired, moved up, or frankly just got really old, leaving him (not young himself) the reigning kind of a shallow division without too many upcoming stars. That’s left him a bit inactive, fighting once a year for the last four years while begging embarrassingly for a fight with Jake Paul to pad his wallet a bit.
The thing is, although not many, there are decent potential rivals in this division (Lawrence Okolie being the most obvious) and Jai Opetaia might potentially be one of them… but even at a weight where there isn’t a lot of room for step-up fights between regional and world levels, Jai Opetaia appears to have cut the line a little bit in getting this mandatory shot. Going from fighting local-level 10-rounders in Australia against the likes of Benjamin Kelleher and Mark Flanagan to the challenge in front of him now is a hell of a jump.
There isn’t a ton of footage of him easily available, but his performance against Kelleher in 2020 (his last relevant fight, since his most recent was an 8-round tune-up at a 208lb catchweight last year) offers a few clues as to what he brings. He’s a long tall southpaw who seems to look to jab or 1-2 and move until he’s got a bit of confidence that he knows what’s coming at him, then hold his feet a little more to deliver some pretty sharp combinations before exiting again. He looks like quite an accurate puncher and willing to set up his shots, working upstairs and down to craft the openings, and he moved pretty well defensively when called upon.
His first problem is going to be that, in that fight at least, that defense was very predicated on being quite a lot faster than Kelleher, and it’s unclear from what he showed that he has a second layer to go to if and when Briedis closes distance on him with more than one punch at a time. He also looked uncomfortable on the odd occasion when he decided he needed to be the one to push forward, taking himself off-balance a few times doing so before going back to his more mobile tactics. He did step in more with a few flurries to close the fight off in the fifth and sixth rounds, but by then Kelleher was barely moving, so it doesn’t give much of a clue to how he’ll respond when Briedis- an extremely good mover in his own right and superb at swaying and shifting to make opponents think he’s closer than he really is before avoiding shots without giving up ground- makes him fall short and he has to find new ways to close space.
Ultimately the likelihood is that Opetaia, who bases his game heavily around his jab, is going to find that jab defused pretty quickly by those little shifts and feints, throwing at empty air, and end up exchanging on the champion’s terms, something he hasn’t yet shown he’s at all equipped to deal with. It’s not impossible that he’s got more in the tank, but Briedis should win this fairly comfortably and probably take a KO if he decides to push the pace in the middle rounds.
The rest of the card is composed of local battles, led by Joel Callimeri vs Koen Mazoudier at 154lbs and Faris Chevallier vs Connor Wallace at 175.
Joe Joyce vs Christian Hammer
Heavyweight
Okay, this headliner stinks a bit. Christian Hammer is a recognisable name to go on Joyce’s record, sure, but the last time he won a relevant fight or even a fight scheduled for longer than 8 rounds was in 2018, against Michael Wallisch- itself a win that hasn’t aged terrifically as Wallisch, just like Hammer, has gone on to lose every other challenge he’s taken since then. He did survive 12 against Frank Sanchez earlier this year, but that doesn’t seem particularly likely here, as he’ll eat jab after jab and being someone who doesn’t move too well anymore isn’t likely to be able to find a rest from a pace from Joe Joyce that by heavyweight standards is pretty relentless.
Jason Cunningham vs Zolani Tete
Bantamweight
The co-headliner, however, could have something about it. Jason Cunningham had a bad time of it in 2017/18, winning a vacant Commonwealth belt but then losing several fights and seeming like he’d topped out just below British level- but that was at super-bantam, a very high weight for someone who’d been competing at superfly just a couple of years previously. Since then he’s settled at bantamweight and gone on a neat little run that’s got him this shot at an IBF world title.
It’s hard to know exactly where Tete stands right now. He looked very good during his WBO title run at this weight, upsetting some applecarts to win and then hold it for several years (not always excitingly, and with some light opponents along the way too, though some of that came from a trouble finding challengers) before losing out to John Riel Casimero in 2019… since when he has done basically nothing, with one 10 rounder under his belt last year. At 34, the time out might affect him negatively- or he might find himself on fresher legs than he otherwise would.
As far as style goes, Cunningham combines tricky movement with solid volume bodywork (with which he folded Terry Le Couviour). He gets a little ragged and sloppy, but he’s not easy to nail down, and because he cuts a neat angle on occasion and because he’s never still in front of his opponent, he’s not easy to nail down clean and very tough to avoid.
This contrasts markedly with the style of Tete- also a back-foot fighter (this will be a game, to some extent, of who can draw the other to move in first) but one insistent on clean sharp movements and solid accurate connections. He has a very good control of range with a whip-sharp jab, but Casimero proved with his third-round KO that if you can get past that first layer, he’s a bit vulnerable to angles taken round the side, and that is precisely what Cunningham will be looking to exploit.
So while on paper looking at records Tete should seem to have this in the bag, in practice this could be really good, with Tete seeking to dominate with that jab and pick Cunningham off as he comes in, whereas the Brit will be looking to slip round the side and deliver hurtful shots from those angles, so let’s hope for a good back-and-forth trade of styles here.
The rest of the card sees Mark Chamberlain try to make an impression at lightweight stepping in with Marc Vidal, and Nathan Heaney somewhat in a holding pattern against Nizar Trimech as he waits for bigger chances that, at 33, need to come for him soon.