Jai Opetaia has retained his IBF cruiserweight boxing title with a masterful performance, stopping English challenger Jack Massey in the sixth round in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.
With Skye Nicolson retaining her WBC women’s featherweight title with.a convincing unanimous points win over England’s Raven Lawson earlier on the card, it was a special night for Australian boxing at Kingdom Arena.
Opetaia and Nicolson were fighting on the undercard before Russian-born Canadian Artur Beterbiev defeated Russian rival Dmitry Bivol on a majority points decision to become the first undisputed light-heavyweight world champion since legendary American Roy Jones Jr.
Opetaia dominated throughout with his fast hands, cutting up his opponent’s face and hammering him to the body.
European and Commonwealth champion Massey, (22-3 12 KOs), who went 10 rounds at heavyweight with former champion Joseph Parker last year, showed plenty of toughness and landed some right hands, but was broken down by a relentless opponent.
Opetaia stepped up the pace in the fifth, with 10th-ranked Massey marked under an eye and bleeding from the nose.
Two minutes into the sixth round, Massey’s corner threw in the towel to spare their man further punishment.
Opetaia had the commentators purring over a performance described as flawless, ruthless and nasty.
Opetaia (26-0, 20 KOs) remained on course for a title unification fight against the winner of next month’s bout between Britain’s WBO champion Chris Billam-Smith and Mexico’s Gilberto Ramirez.
“I’m hoping that comes man,” Opetaia said after the first defence of his second title reign.
“I felt good, I knew Jack was going to come to fight. I’ve nothing but respect for him.
“I want to say a massive thank you to my whole team, we’ve had to jump through some hurdles to get to this ring
“So many ups and downs but we stayed staunch, we stayed together and we got the win.”
Nicolson retained her title with another classy effort, winning 99-91 on one card and 98-92 on the other two in the first women’s world title bout to be held in Saudi Arabia.
Her jab and footwork and accurate power punching were too slick for seventh-ranked Chapman, who landed the occasional punch but couldn’t maintain any pressure.
After a couple of quiet rounds to start with Nicolson started to find her range and was untroubled in the second defence of her title.
“Happy to get the win, there’s still so much more to go, so I’m excited,” Nicolson told DAZN.
“We’ve barely scratched the surface. They keep thinking they’ve cracked the code, but the code seems to remain uncracked.
“I felt sharp. I had to beat her to the punch, I feel like that was a big key part in our game plan,” added Nicolson, who wants 17-0 third-ranked American Tiara Brown to be her next challenger.
