Opetaia’s Scripted Sympathy: Playing the Victim Card to Deflect Criticism

Jai Opetaia seemed bitter on Saturday, talking about his inability to get the unification fight he wants against WBA and WBO cruiserweight champion Gilberto ‘Zurdo’ Ramirez.

Opetaia (27-0, 21 KOs) says he’s defending his IBF belt against Claudio Squeo just to “stay busy” for his next fight on May 13th on DAZN at the Gold Coast Convention Centre, Broadbeach. What an awful fight.

Excuses Rejected

Unfortunately, many fans don’t care what excuses Opetaia gives about why he’s fighting another lower-level opponent because he’s already fought too many of them during his ten-year professional career. They see the type of fighters the Aussie Opetaia is steadily fighting and ignore his explanations.

It doesn’t matter what excuses Jai uses to try and whitewash why his resume is filled with tomato cans from top to bottom. Fans aren’t listening to him.

Ramirez (47-1, 30 KOs) is a star in the U.S. and has a lot of different fighters that he can face in the States that Americans want to see. Opetaia is unknown to U.S. fans, and one reason is his dreadful resume. Zurdo doesn’t need Jai. It’s one-sided.

Victim Card

“Stay busy. I’m chasing these unification fights, but this one [Claudio Squeo] is the next one I got. I’m staying busy. He’s in my way, so I’ve got to separate that, but back to work,” said Jai Opetaia to DAZN Boxing, discussing what his goals are and what he has in front of him in his next title defense of his IBF cruiserweight belt against #14 Claudio Squeo on May 13th.

“I’ve been chasing these fights. The unification fights are all I’m asking for,” Opetaia continued when asked about his desire to face WBA and WBO cruiserweight champion Gilberto ‘Zurdo’ Ramirez. “With Zurdo, I’ve been chasing that fight bad. That fight is easy to make. I don’t know what else I can do, but we’re ready. We stay ready; we’ll be ready, so let’s get it on. We’re wasting time.”

It doesn’t matter what excuses Opetaia cooks up to justify his weak, inflated resume. The fans go by what they see, and what they see with him is the guy has fought nobody other than an old, past-his-prime 39-year-old Mairis Briedis during his career. Sadly, Jai didn’t even look good against him.

It’s too late now. For Opetaia to make himself marketable overnight, he would need to fight six times per year the way Gennadiy Golovkin did and go after the killers from cruiserweight to heavyweight. That’s not going to happen. He’ll be fighting the Squeo and Jake Massey types, wondering why Zurdo Ramirez is ignoring him. Jai just doesn’t get it.