The bell rings to bring an end to the 10th round. Jai Opetaia sits on the stool in his corner, blood beginning to spill out over his bottom lip. His strength and conditioning trainer, Mark Mathie, reaches for his mouthguard. The weary fighter shakes his head. Mathie seeks confirmation and receives a nod. Opetaia’s jaw is broken. Horrifically, it would turn out. The 27-year-old Australian has six minutes opposite the world’s best cruiserweight in front of him. For Opetaia, it’s just the latest hurdle placed between him and his dream. Few know what he’s overcome to reach this point. Those who have witnessed the journey up close know, while he may break, he won’t be broken.
Watch the full JAI OPETAIA: UNBROKEN documentary below.
Pugilistic prospects don’t come much more blue chip than Jai Opetaia. His old man had fought, as had both grandfathers. He became a junior world champ at 15 and was selected for the London Olympics as a 16-year-old. Boxing was in his blood and, it seemed, success in the sport was in his future. Despite his pedigree, the young southpaw’s early achievements were no accident.
“I was just always training. I wasn’t allowed to do anything, go hang out with my mates, until I trained first,” Opetaia recalls.
“If I had a mate stay over or hang out, my old man would make us both train.
“They just stopped coming over. ‘We’re not staying at your house anymore.’
“I was always boxing, always training, it was just a part of my life. It was normal to me.”
Not that the self-confessed “little sh*t” minded too much.
Even as a child, he knew what path he was going to take.
“A lot of people find out after school what they want to do, they go to uni and they change their mind and stuff like that,” he said.
“I had the one goal my whole life, it was always fighting, fighting, fighting. That’s all it was.
“It was just training, get ready for a fight, training, get ready for a fight.
“It’s been a bit of a roller coaster but it’s always been a part of who I was. Being a fighter was always who I was.”
At 10, he told his mother Tracy he wanted to go to the Olympics and that was that.
He and his father Tapu got to work, shaping the young Jai into a fighter who could compete at the highest level, first as an amateur, then in the pro ranks.
And it worked.
“I’ll never forget the first day I watched him spar, I thought, ‘Wow, this kid could be anything,’” boxing legend Jeff Fenech said.
“His eye, his skill level, his movement, how easy he made things look.
“He could just do things that I’d never seen a guy that size do as comfortably as he did.
“I walked out of there thinking, ‘That’s the best prospect I’ve ever seen.’ I was totally bamboozled.”
Opetaia turned professional in 2015, aged 20, chalking up three wins in four months, his first two fights coming just a fortnight apart.
Boxing commentator Ben Damon was on hand to witness Opetaia’s rapid rise in the sport.
“He started as a whirlwind as a professional,” Damon said.
“He showed that he had all of the skills. He was able to win all of those fights and every time he was stepped up in terms of opponents, he was too good for them.
“He was someone who had a lot of natural gifts but was also willing to work hard and I think that’s why he was so attractive to so many in Australian boxing.”
While Opetaia was busy justifying the excitement which had followed him from the amateurs, an issue with his left hand, the southpaw’s trump card, threatened to derail the hype train.
“I had a bad left hand for years, the start of my pro career, my left hand was terrible,” he said.
“It was my third pro fight that I fractured it in two different spots.
“We never got surgery because back then we really couldn’t afford it - it was a $12,000 surgery.
“We just had to ice it. It never healed, it was always so sensitive and it just took one punch and it would throw my left hand off for weeks until I gave it a rest again.”
So on he fought. Training, recovering, fighting, recovering, all while his main offensive weapon was significantly blunted.
Regardless, Opetaia still took on all comers, often stepping up to heavyweight just to get a fight.
A resounding testament to his skill level and capacity to endure, he just kept on winning, elevating himself into position to potentially challenge for a world title.
It told Mathie he had a different type of athlete on his hands.
“Jai was pretty much 19-0 with one hand and that’s not an exaggeration, at all,” Mathie said.
“I knew at that stage that he was something special.
“I don’t know how he used to get through mentally knowing he really only had one hand.”
Regardless, Opetaia found himself on the verge of a meeting with the division’s top dogs.
Covid had other plans.
While the enforced layoff was frustrating, it did give Opetaia a much-needed break and, after plenty of convincing, he was able to address a long-standing concern.
“He wasn’t that keen on getting surgery when we first raised it and the reason was, he wanted to fight and earn money,” Opetaia’s then-promoter Dean Lonergan said.
“I knew and the rest of the team knew that, if you want to compete at the highest level, you’ve got to have the hand right.”
Nine months out of the ring didn’t exactly appeal and it wasn’t his only cause for apprehension.
“To be honest, I didn’t think they were going to fix it,” he explained.
“I thought we were going to have surgery and there was no way they’re going to bring it back to 100 per cent.
“They pushed me and they told me to get the surgery and I’m happy I did.”
With the shackles now off and his full offensive arsenal at his disposal, Opetaia could turn his attention to the cruiserweight king, Mairis Briedis.
Originally booked for April 2022, the fight was moved to a date in May after Briedis contracted COVID-19 and then the flu.
Then came perhaps the greatest hurdle of all for Opetaia.
“I was doing some sparring and I had a sore rib, but it just felt bruised and I kept training, kept sparring, kept it to myself and a week later after I first hurt it, I went to go throw a punch and then it sort of tore and separated,” he said.
Sitting in the hospital, Opetaia thought his world title shot had just gone begging.
“He tore the cartilage off the bone and it was in a really, really weird spot,” Mathie explained.
“He was told to sit on the couch for 12 weeks by the first three doctors that he went and saw.
“We were just fortunate that I train one of the head heart and lung trauma surgeons at the hospital and he heard about in passing from one of his doctors that had checked Jai’s scans the day before.
“He rang me up and said, ‘Can I operate on him?’”
Given a sliver of hope, organisers were able to push the fight back until July 2nd, just nine weeks after the surgery, which involved having a clamp flown in from Melbourne to be placed on Opetaia’s ribs.
“It’s probably the most stressful time of my life,” Mathie said of the following weeks, as he tried to guide Opetaia through a plan which would get him ready for the fight while also allowing his injury to heal.
“If anyone’s going to get through it, it would be him and we probably achieved a few things to get to that fight that probably not many other people could have.
“Sometimes I look back and I still don’t know how we did it. It wasn’t like another rib injury where you try to get him better in three months and then we’ll organise a fight after that, we had a deadline.
“His mental strength and his mindset is just different. There’d be a small percentage of people in the world that would be able to do that.”
Despite carrying an injury which would normally require a significant period of recovery, Opetaia ground out four sessions a day.
He wore a singlet with a sticker on it to remind sparring partners where to avoid and exercises were tailored so as not to engage the damaged area.
Unfortunately, that wouldn’t be the last of the challenges thrown at him in the lead up to the biggest fight of his life.
“A fortnight before the fight, he got influenza and he was pretty crook,” Opetaia’s coach Mark Wilson said.
“I thought there was no way in the world this kid’s going to be able to get into the ring and fight for a world title.
“Two days I said, ‘Nah, you’ve got to rest.’ But after that, ‘No, coach, I need to train.’
“We had to work with what we had. All he wanted to do was train, you’ve got to hold him back.”
Opetaia explained his frame of mind at the time and how his early days in the sport shaped his approach.
“I had in my mind where this sickness would be gone, this sickness isn’t going to last for the fight, so if I can push through this now, by the time the fight comes, I’m gonna feel a million bucks,” he said.
“That’s part of boxing. Nothing ever goes to plan. Dates have always changed, fights have been moved. I got used to it.
“I was getting phone calls saying this opponent pulled out or, ‘Now you’re fighting at heavyweight,’ so I was used to things always changing.
“I had to fight. Pulling out of the fight never even crossed my mind. No matter what, we were getting in that ring.
“We never really know how far we can really push ourselves. That fight, that camp, man, I pushed myself. I really f**kin’ pushed my body to the limits.
“I wanted to stop, wanted to slow down, wanted to give up but I just kept intense, every day, non-stop and I just felt like a beast.”
Around a week out from the bout, Opetaia’s family were hit with the crushing news of the passing of his grandmother.
With the funeral on the NSW Central Coast just three days before the fight, Opetaia was forced to make the heart-breaking call to miss it.
“It was really upsetting for him because him and my mum were close,” Opetaia’s mother said.
“It was a really hard time.”
After a harrowing road just to get to the fight, all that stood between Opetaia and his world title dream was the best cruiserweight on the planet.
Latvia’s Briedis was the IBF and Ring Magazine champion in the 200-pound (91kg) division, having previously held the WBC and WBO straps.
The 37-year-old had one loss on his record - a razor-thin decision defeat to Oleksandr Usyk, who himself had since become unified champion at heavyweight.
Opetaia was being thrown in the deepest of deep ends.
“Mairis Briedis, a lot of people thought was a step too far,” Wilson said.
“He was the king of cruisers. He’d only lost one fight to Usyk and that was a majority decision and, if you watch the fight, he gave Usyk a hell of a lot of trouble.”
Opetaia conceded that Briedis would present a challenge he’d yet to face.
“It was a big jump from my past competition to Briedis,” Opetaia said.
“He was the number one cruiserweight in the world and my competition before that was nowhere near that international level.
“Because of Covid I was unable to build that international experience.”
When fight week arrived on the Gold Coast, Breidis appeared relaxed, wearing a Crocodile Dundee hat in homage to “Crocodile Harry”, a Latvian migrant who some claim was the inspiration for the Hollywood hit.
Opetaia on the other hand was stone-faced, zeroed in on the task ahead of him.
“I don’t want to talk to anyone, I don’t want to be around anyone,” he said.
“If you’re not here to help me train for this fight, then stay away from me.
“That’s my mindset when I was getting ready for that fight.
“Before the fight, every single night, I would just picture the fight in my head. Even when I’d try not to, I just couldn’t help it. I became obsessed with it.
“What I needed to do, how I was going to do it. I pictured the fight every day in my head and then once I got to the fight and I was warming up, it felt like I had already fought the fight.”
So what did he need to do and how was he going to do it?
“Box, stay long, beat him to the punch, move, stay off the centre line, don’t give him a chance to set himself, get in there with the power punches and just use your youth and speed,” Wilson said of the strategy going into the fight.
And for the first half of the fight, that’s exactly what Opetaia did.
If there was any doubt the Aussie belonged at the top level, he eliminated it with a clinical boxing performance over the first six rounds, showcasing the same slick movement and combination punching he’d used to dominate the domestic scene.
For virtually the first time in 30 professional fights, Briedis looked a step off the pace.
Despite the local’s early dominance, one of the few significant punches Briedis landed through the opening stages caused some issues for Opetaia.
“Third round. It was an uppercut,” Opetaia recalled.
“He hit me on the left side of the cheek and I felt [my jaw] straight away just break.
“It was so uncomfortable. I was trying to bite it up into the mouthguard and trying to protect it.
“I didn’t tell the corner because I didn’t want no stress.”
Opetaia’s performance at the time was also giving his team little cause for concern.
Despite the early injury, he continued to have success and landed a lead uppercut in the fourth round which broke Briedis’ nose.
“We were doing that punch heaps in sparring. We even said, ‘That’s going to give him trouble,” Opetaia said.
“I’m spewing it was right towards the end of the round, the bell sort of saved him.”
It was the type of shot which made people like Fenech take notice all those years ago.
“What big cruiserweight throws those kind of punches?” Fenech said.
“Briedis just wasn’t ready for the angles. Jai’s different to everybody else in that weight division.
“He’s got a different skill level, a different speed level, he’s got a great eye and when he landed that punch, it was a very, very telling punch.”
“It’s a great punch, because he’s such a good mover, he can get it off, ‘bang’ and spin off at the same time,” Wilson said.
“Briedis didn’t know where he was, he walked to wrong corner I think.
“I thought one round there, I think it was the fourth or fifth, if I had have told Jai to pull the trigger and go, he could have gone close to stopping him but we said, ‘Stick to the gameplan, box, box, box.’”
Pre-fight, Opetaia had spoken of wanting to earn the victory.
He’d overcome so much just to get to the starting line, it was almost a given he’d face more adversity in the fight itself.
Potentially on the wrong end of a clean sweep on the judges’ scorecards over the first half of the fight, a desperate Briedis ratcheted up the pressure.
“He essentially threw all of his tactics away, Mairis Briedis,” Damon said.
“He just went, ‘Well, I’m going to have to give myself a chance of winning this fight by pushing forward, taking away the boxing ability of my opponent and making this into a war.’”
Opetaia concedes his own success to that point may have given him a false sense of security.
“I remember him hitting me with one of his biggest shots and it just built up confidence,” Opetaia said.
“I was sort of standing there a bit too much. Because he hit me with his best shot and I was thinking, ‘I just took your best shot and I’m sweet.’
“I sort of let it get to my head and I sort of tried to stand there a bit more and I went back to the corner and coach picked up on it, he said my feet were stopped a bit more.”
Those in attendance at the Gold Coast Convention Centre could sense the shift in momentum too.
“Briedis started coming back and I’m like, ‘F**k, this is where we’ve never been to,’” Mathie said.
“I hope to f**k this guy doesn’t just keep getting better and we don’t.”
As the Briedis onslaught ramped up, Opetaia’s jaw was aggravated further by a barrage of uppercuts.
Even prior to the fight with Briedis, Opetaia’s chin had a reputation.
That was only enhanced during rounds eight, nine and ten as the Latvian stepped on the gas and landed several bombs.
Not that Opetaia takes pride in his ability to eat a shot.
“When people say I’ve got a granite chin, it’s a compliment but it’s not,” he explained.
“They’re only saying I’ve got a granite chin because I’m getting hit.
“I feel like, if I finish sparring, and they go, ‘Oh, man, you’re tough!’ I feel like that’s an insult.
“I’m like, ‘What? Did I just go in there and get hit that much that I just look tough?’
“It’s a compliment but, at the same time, I’m not out there to prove I’ve got a granite chin, I’m out to box smart and win a fight.”
As the world title fight entered the late stages, Opetaia may have had his wits about him and been up on the cards, but the brutal war had taken its toll.
By the 10th round, his jaw was broken on both sides.
“Because my jaw was already loose, I couldn’t bite into my mouthguard, so every time he’d hit it, it would just sort of push around,” he said.
“I couldn’t even hide it anymore. My jaw was just sagging down. It felt like I had a mouth full of little pebbles or rocks.
“I knew it was broken. It was just sort of, ‘We’ll worry about it after the fight. Finish the fight, finish the fight.’ That was the only thought in my head.”
It was around that time Opetaia’s corner became aware of the issue.
“When I went to take his mouthguard out in the tenth,” Mathie said.
“We’ve got to be careful because the microphones are above us, so you can’t talk too much.
“I think their camp knew before we really did because they were screaming and going right off and [Briedis] was chasing.
“I went to take his mouthguard out and he shook his head and I said, ‘F**k! Really?’ And he just nodded his head so I just left his mouthguard in.”
Opetaia’s corner were confident their man had banked enough rounds to win on the cards, even if he gave away the last couple, while there was no doubt he had the fortitude to fight on.
“It was not an option. Not getting off the stool, not finishing the fight, didn’t cross my mind,” Opetaia said.
“It was a goal we set and it was something that I was going to do.”
The danger, in the minds of the challenger’s corner, was the ringside physician being called in.
“I knew if the referee had sent him to the doctor, the doctor would never have been able to let him continue,” Mathie said.
Not content with just continuing the fight, Opetaia rose from his stool and marched to the centre of the ring to take the fight to the three-time world champ.
“10 seconds into the round Briedis is chasing him to try and hit his jaw, he hits him with a big shot and Jai calls him on to stand there and go toe-to-toe with him,” Mathie recalled.
“He’s not normal.”
Opetaia may have benefitted from a more cautious approach as, by the end of the 11th round, his face was a complete mess.
“His trainer and his corner, they could have been forgiven for pulling him out,” Damon said of the moments before the 12th and final frame.
“Fair enough he’s clear and ahead in a world title fight but he was badly broken at that point.”
Potentially three minutes away from achieving his dream, Opetaia shudders at the thought of it being ripped away from him.
“I don’t even want to think about it. It makes me sick to my stomach,” he said.
“Going through all this and what I went through to get there, the pain, the sacrifice, and then going in there and someone call the fight off?
“I would have lost it. No way.”
Wilson sent Opetaia out with what he thought were simple instructions.
“I know there’s a duty of care and this stuff but the kid was in front and I said to him, ‘You can afford to lose this round. You’ve got to run, you’ve got to hold, you just can not stand there and mix it,’” he said.
“I know how good the kid is on his feet, if he stuck to the plan.
“It would have been just devastating if that fight was stopped in that last round.
“I told him, ‘Mate, move, move, move.’
“He went straight back out there and tried to go toe-to-toe! I had no voice the next day.”
Opetaia re-lived those agonising final moments: “Even my corner was just yelling out, ‘Run! Run! Box! Run!’ A part of me just wanted to go, ‘Come on, let’s go, last round!’
“That last minute, it’s hard for me to watch.
“I remember we were in the clinch and his shoulder was pushing it and I remember the noise in my head when all the bones were clicking around.”
Repeatedly the pair clashed, both exhausted and wearing the damage from the preceding 30-something minutes.
The tension in the venue was palpable.
“I still remember the last round, looking at the clock, there was 29 seconds to go,” Opetaia's manager Mick Francis said.
“That’s the longest 29 seconds of my life.”
Eventually, mercifully, the bell sounded.
When ring announcer Steve Peios read out the cards, Opetaia was given the nod on all three, winning eight rounds in the eyes of two judges and seven with the other, becoming Australia’s first cruiserweight world champion.
Those closest to the new champion reflected on the journey as the venue erupted.
“It makes me emotional talking about it now,” Mathie said.
“All those things that we went through to get there, people would have no idea what it took for us to get there, let alone win it like that. It was pretty special.”
Opetaia’s uncle was among the happiest, having “only” bet $22,000 on his underdog nephew because “that’s all I had.”
“He ended up buying himself another Harley out of it,” Opetaia’s mother said.
“He calls it the Harley that Jai bought him.
“That’s how confident my brother was.”
After the fight, the severity of his injuries and significance of the achievement became clear.
Dr. Ben Manion, who was the ringside physician on the night, was asked whether it was common for a jaw to break on both sides after it had been fractured once.
He explained people don’t normally keep fighting after that time.
“There aren’t too many Jai Opetaias out there,” Fenech said of the performance.
“Under adversity, fighting the best cruiserweight in the world, having a broken jaw, going through what he went through to get into the ring that night was pretty extreme.
“To hang in there the way he did and to keep fighting, I don’t know - there’s been a lot of great Australian boxing stories but they don’t match Jai Opetaia’s fight, as far as I’m concerned.”
Opetaia, who couldn’t chew solid food for the next three months, took particular satisfaction in the nature of the victory.
“I spoke a lot about earning it. ‘I want to go in there and earn this fight.’ And I felt like after that, in the whole prep, the big fight, breaking my jaw, keep going, I felt like I earned it,” Opetaia said.
“No one can take that away from me and that’s a good feeling.
“That sh*t doesn’t happen by fluke. That fight wasn’t a fluke, wasn’t a one-off, that’s me, that’s what I do.
“Now the world knows, this is my time.”
