The brutal message from rising Australian boxing star Jai Opetaia after shattering opponent's jaw: 'I was in a rush'
Opetaia delivered another commanding performance on the Gold Coast, defending his IBF and The Ring cruiserweight titles.
The Australian champion stopped unbeaten Italian challenger Claudio Squeo in the fifth round with a thunderous right hook.
Moments after the fight, news broke that Squeo had likely suffered a broken jaw.
'It was a matter of time,' commentator Ben Damon said as the referee waved the bout off.
Opetaia later told the crowd why he dispatched his latest challenger in such efficient - and savage - style.
All too easy for Jai Opetaia #OpetaiaSqueo pic.twitter.com/ptm6k5MwkF
— Ben Damon (@ben_damon) June 8, 2025
Claudio Squeo entered the ring undefeated but was overwhelmed by Opetaia's reach, power and relentless forward pressure
'I was just in a rush, I just really wanted to get him out of here,' he said.
It was a chillingly honest remark from a fighter who has become known for both his patience and ferocity.
The fight began cautiously, with Opetaia feeling out his opponent in the opening round.
By the second, he had found his rhythm, landing clean blows and showing off his footwork.
'The intensity has dialled right up,' Damon said during the third as Squeo began to retreat.
Cracks appeared in the Italian's defence as Opetaia pushed forward with increasing pressure.
In the fourth, the crowd erupted in boos after a controversial moment.Squeo crumpled from a crushing body shot, but the referee ruled Opetaia had held him.
Replays showed the punch landed cleanly in the chest, not low as Squeo had signalled.
It didn't matter. In the fifth, Opetaia closed the show. He marched forward and crushed Squeo's jaw with a brutal right hook. Squeo dropped to his knees, grabbed his face and couldn't continue.
'He knew it was hurt straight away,' said Ted Cofie in commentary.
Opetaia, who broke his own jaw in the same ring in 2022 against Mairis Briedis, showed no sympathy. Instead, he turned his attention to unification.
'I'm chasing these unification fights. I'm chasing these world champions,' Opetaia said.
That means WBO and WBA titleholder Gilberto 'Zurdo' Ramírez is now firmly in his sights.
Ramírez is set to face Yuniel Dorticos on June 28, with Opetaia planning to be ringside.
'Next fight is Zurdo Ramírez,' Opetaia said. 'He's mentioned me, he's told me he'll fight me next … so let's get it on.'
The 29-year-old then stared down the broadcast camera and repeated his challenge: 'Let's get it on.'
Opetaia's win moved his record to a perfect 28-0, with many of those victories ending in highlight-reel knockouts.
Despite being one of the world's most dangerous punchers, his technical skill often goes unnoticed.
His height, reach, and power were too much for the Italian, who entered undefeated with a 17-0 record.
Opetaia thanked the packed crowd and gave a special shoutout to fans from Australia and the Pacific Islands.
'We did what we have to do. We've got a lot more to go,' he said.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Times
an hour ago
- Times
Funky fields and ‘Bazball' batting — 2005 Ashes was trailblazing series
It was a series ahead of its time. 'It definitely felt like in that Test series we were playing a different form of Test cricket to anything that had been played previously, particularly in the aggressiveness of some of the batting,' Andrew Strauss, England's opener in the 2005 Ashes, says. He is right. It was not quite Bazball, which peaked for England at 5.50 runs an over in their Pakistan series in 2022, but England's run rate of 3.87 in that Ashes series is their 12th-fastest ever (the top nine are all in the Bazball era) — a series that they won, remember, against an attack of Glenn McGrath, Shane Warne and Brett Lee, with the fourth bowler (either Mike Kasprowicz or Jason Gillespie) mercilessly targeted, even though they were two very fine operators. This was a series, among many other unforgettable moments of greatness, in which Kevin Pietersen was hitting the great McGrath back over his head on debut in the first Test at Lord's and smashing rather than defending his way to a draw with 158 in the fifth Test at the Oval. England also scored 407 all out (at a run rate of 5.13) on the first day of the second Test at Edgbaston after being put in by Ricky Ponting. Whether or not it remains the greatest series of all time is a matter of opinion, but it certainly had an impact on the game. Take the bowling by right-armers from round the wicket to left-handers. It had been done before, of course, with England's Craig White having had some success against Brian Lara, and there had been some images floating around of Pakistan's Shoaib Akhtar really troubling Adam Gilchrist with that tactic at the end of a spell during the previous winter. But here was Andrew Flintoff neutering Gilchrist, one of Australia's greatest weapons, with that angle of attack. The left-hander, who changed the role of the wicketkeeper-batsman for ever, averaged only 22 in that series, without even as much as a half-century, dismissed four times by Flintoff, all from round the wicket. England's dressing room during the 2001 Ashes had a whiteboard detailing the Australia batsmen's weaknesses and, as a result, plans to dismiss them. Next to Gilchrist's name there was nothing but a question mark. It has been said that the 2005 plan came about by accident when Flintoff had to move to round the wicket because of a dodgy foothole in a one-day international at Lord's earlier that summer. Whatever the genesis, as Simon Jones later revealed in his autobiography, by the time of the first Test, the whiteboard read: 'Go around the wicket and cramp him for room.' It was no surprise that England had come up with a plan of some sort because the head coach, Duncan Fletcher, was a stickler for the importance of angles in both batting and bowling. In exasperation he once asked Marcus Trescothick: 'Did you do geometry in school?' when Strauss's opening partner was unable to fathom the gist of Fletcher's thinking, with the coach playfully slipping a couple of protractors under Trescothick's door while on tour in Sri Lanka. Before the 2005 series Fletcher had warned Strauss about the danger of the angles he was creating when playing Warne's leg spin. Strauss wanted to move across his stumps and play everything to the leg side with the spin, but Fletcher suggested, if the ball was short enough, that Strauss stay leg-side of it and punch it with a straight bat through cover. 'I'd just got a hundred against [Stuart] MacGill [another Australian leg spinner] six months before and I remember thinking, 'I think I'm OK here, mate,' ' Strauss says. But then in the second Test at Edgbaston, Strauss was spectacularly bowled around his legs when trying to pad up to Warne. He changed his mind about Fletcher's advice and turned to the Merlyn spin-bowling machine for hours of practice. 'Warne didn't get me out at Lord's but I did think, 'These angles are tricky for me,' ' he says. 'At Edgbaston it became increasingly obvious that I had to play it differently. Fletch was very counter-intuitive in that sense of looking to score off the back foot through the off side rather than looking to hit everything leg side. That was Fletch's genius. He was the only coach I think who really told me things I'd never really considered in the game of cricket before. 'It was like learning a different language but it certainly did help me. We had that Merlyn bowling machine and I remember facing thousands of balls off that. But it's one thing doing it against the Merlyn machine and another doing it against Shane Warne in the middle of an Ashes Test match.' Playing against the spin, as long as the length is right — either short enough or full enough — has now become an accepted coaching tip at the top of the game, with Rahul Dravid's famous email to Pietersen when the England batsman was struggling so badly against left-arm spin containing just that advice. Mind you, those problems of Pietersen's were mainly brought about by the introduction of the Decision Review System, which was not in place in 2005, and caused players to think about playing finger spin very differently, representing a huge change in the game from that time. 'It didn't affect me quite as much as some others,' Strauss says. 'I was always trying to get my bat in front of my pad anyway. Back in the day people used to squeeze the ball between bat and pad, but you couldn't play like that any more.' The round-the-wicket to left-handers theory was much more of a problem for Strauss, as South Africa's Morne Morkel later exploited it remorselessly. Gilchrist's weakness would undoubtedly have been acted upon more quickly these days. England may now be reining in the size of their analysis team a little but there is still a whole heap of data out there for teams to use. Back then there was very little. 'Obviously we'd worked out that Gilchrist really struggled with that angle,' Strauss says. 'What we didn't have at that stage was the deep statistical analysis to back up our hunches. In the latter stages of my career it became obvious that was an angle that was hard to contend with. In those days we were very much using Fletch's eye, where technical weaknesses might occur. 'Increasingly these days you will find out a player's weakness very quickly in a way that probably took longer back in those days. I was a good example. You come into Test cricket, you have a good run and then after a year or so people start working you out. That time is definitely shortened now. To a certain degree everyone knows everyone anyway because of franchise cricket, but there's fewer places to hide these days.' As Mark Garaway, England's analyst from the following winter onwards, tells me, we now know that Gilchrist was a right-eyed-dominant left-handed batsman, and so the angle from Flintoff round the wicket and reverse-swinging the ball away meant the ball was constantly going into the line of his less preferred left eye. The solution would have been to close off even more in his stance. Nowadays bowling round the wicket to left-handers for right-arm bowlers is almost de rigueur, but as David Warner consistently showed in his horror times against Stuart Broad, it does not mean that batsmen can counter it successfully. That 2005 Ashes was the first time in living memory for most of us that Australia were really rattled by an England team, particularly by the reverse-swing from Flintoff and Jones. Both of them achieved that reverse-swing in both directions, away and into the batsmen, which was quite a new phenomenon after the years of booming in-swingers from the likes of Waqar Younis (there were no wobble-seam balls yet), but they also bowled a good length doing it, rather than just the toe-crushing yorkers of yore. Australia just could not generate that reverse-swing in that series, and so they set about pinching the Australian bowling coach Troy Cooley back after that series. When they played England for the first time thereafter, Cooley said to the Australian players: 'Boys, today, eyes in the middle, no looking elsewhere. Just worry about us.' As Gilchrist later recalled in his autobiography, 'It was like a boxing glove came out and smacked me in the head and said, 'You idiot. That's what you were doing for the best part of three months in England — worrying about what the opponent is going to do.' ' The field placings by the captain, Michael Vaughan, contributed to this too. There are some funky fields these days, but Vaughan startled Australia with some of his arrangements, placing a short extra cover at Edgbaston for Matthew Hayden, who immediately hit one there to Strauss, and constantly playing on Hayden's ego that thrived on the boom of a straight drive by placing a catcher so straight that he was almost on the cut strip. Much was made of Pat Cummins's Bazball-spooked immediate use of sweepers at Edgbaston in the first Test of 2023, but it was the smart use of sweepers and in-out fields by Vaughan that also cornered Gilchrist back then. 'They were agile with their field settings,' he said. 'I certainly always felt traditionally that field settings to me tended to follow a certain path and then evolve through an innings, but it felt like they were setting quite unique fields to me in that 2005 series. There might be one slip and a floater and almost a fly slip or deep backward point, clearly targeting an area, on or just outside the off stump.' We sometimes bemoan the lack of bouncers and physical threat in today's game, and it has become an understandably sensitive subject since the tragic death of Phillip Hughes in 2014, but 2005 was not for the faint-hearted. The first morning at Lord's was a brutal examination for the Australia batsmen. As the opener Justin Langer has said: 'It felt more like an AFL grand final or a State of Origin clash between Queensland and New South Wales. Everything seemed to be racing in fast-forward. Matty Hayden was hit in the helmet, Ricky [Ponting] had his face cut open. It was more like a war than a chapter of the gentleman's game.' There is no doubt that the general standard of fielding has improved dramatically since 2005 and even the catching was uncharacteristically sloppy in that series. Pietersen dropped six catches, with Fletcher working out that he was off balance, on one leg, when the ball was hit, with the help of the substitute fielder Trevor Penney (England had some rather good substitute fielders in that series, as Ponting discovered when run out by Gary Pratt) while they were watching one day. Fletcher shouted when the ball was hit and Penney duly did the observations on Pietersen. Of course, Strauss did take one rather exceptional catch off Gilchrist at Trent Bridge (obviously with Flintoff bowling round the wicket), diving so far to his left that his arm became a telescope, and for that Strauss reveals Fletcher's planning. 'Fletch had us doing a lot of our slip catching with a gap between us really trying to challenge us to catch balls outside our own little bubble,' he says. Strauss is unsure whether the standard of slip catching has improved in Test cricket and statistics in that field are scarce and sketchy, simply because one man's drop is often another man's refusal. As for the changes overall in the Test game, especially in these Bazball times, he makes some good points. He is not anti-Bazball but, like many of us, he did watch Sam Konstas's Test debut for Australia and say: 'That risk/reward doesn't make sense to me.' Indeed, it didn't. 'It's still a five-day game and it's still a risk/reward game,' he says. 'You still have to decide whether the reward for the risk you play is the right one. Sometimes the England team have got that wrong. We've come up against some teams that, man for man, we are not as good as, and we have asked them some serious questions because of the way we play. It has really ruffled people. But because it is such a long-form game you are still going to get to the point where the better team come out on top most of the time. 'To win a Test match you don't have to do anything radically different from what we did in our day, which was roughly to find a way of taking 20 wickets in changing conditions over the course of two innings and you have got to get 600-plus runs on the board. How you do that is an interesting question.' It sure is, but 20 years ago, England, unexpectedly and stunningly, certainly found the correct answer.
The Guardian
2 hours ago
- The Guardian
Crows handle the hype to break Collingwood hoodoo in strange thriller that had the lot
'The lid is obviously not on, is it?' Adelaide coach Matthew Nicks said late on Saturday night. He was talking about the town, not the team. It was the third-biggest crowd at the redeveloped Adelaide Oval, topped only by the opening day of an Ashes Test match and an Adele concert. It was the most important game Adelaide has played since the 2017 grand final. It was a game that mirrored the respective seasons of the two teams – Collingwood flew the gates, and the Crows overhauled them. It was a strange game that went into neutral for about an hour, and then into overdrive in the final 10 minutes. It was a game that made no sense on the stat sheet; a game that demanded a rematch – most likely again in Adelaide, hopefully in better conditions, and maybe even at the MCG on the final Saturday in September. Hawthorn knocked the stuffing out of Collingwood the week before but there was much to admire about their response. Their backline in particular was often fighting out of its weight and class division but they were resolute and on their toes all night. The Pies had 25 inside 50s to six in the opening term, and so many of those entries were low altitude torps, scrubbers and end-on-enders. It was a clear plan and it confused what is an organised, diligent Adelaide defence. But the more it hosed down, and the more Collingwood extended the inside 50s count, the less likely they looked like converting them. It was many of Adelaide's unheralded players, especially their defenders, who almost never got out-marked and who thwarted dozens of attacks. Meteorological and tactical intervention altered the tempo of the game several times. For long periods, it was a slog. 'If it's going to be hard for us to score, we'll make it impossible for them,' Craig McRae said. But the Crows were the more patient and efficient team. The final few minutes had the lot. It had Riley Thilthorpe, with his civil war beard and his bung shoulder, out-marking three of the biggest Collingwood players. It had some Nick Daicos magic. It had some interesting umpiring. It had bodies flailing. It had Scott Pendlebury just ambling and pointing his way through the mayhem like he was out for a post-downpour Saturday evening stroll. Adelaide has played some excellent football against Collingwood in the Nicks era, but they just haven't been able to get the win. They played a classic at the Adelaide Oval in Collingwood's premiership year when the Crows skipped away to a big early lead, and the follow up game at the MCG was also close. Last year, they were closing in on the Pies when Izak Rankine was pinged for running too far. Normally so even-tempered, Nicks was filthy that day. 'We're sick of learning,' he said. Earlier this year at the MCG, they ran them close, but didn't seize their chances. Rankine sent two set shots sailing out on the full and Dan Curtin also missed a sitter. Nicks said they were a good team that'd been beaten by a great team. They were not yet ready. Once they could win a game like that, he said, they will have graduated as a serious team. That's indisputable now. They've locked in two home finals. They've broken a hoodoo stretching back to 2016. They've proved they're a worthy premiership favourite. It was interesting to compare the way Adelaide handled the home hype with how Fremantle did. Unlike the Crows, the Dockers didn't meet the occasion. They were wasteful up forward, gave away too many free kicks down back and were out of whack right across their lines. In short, they were totally outclassed. Every time they'd make a meal of a seemingly certain goal, the ball would trampoline up the other end and Brisbane would score. They were pinned in their back half like an Aussie batsman facing Jasprit Bumrah. Sign up to From the Pocket: AFL Weekly Jonathan Horn brings expert analysis on the week's biggest AFL stories after newsletter promotion In contrast, the Lions still look the most likely to match it with Adelaide. As they flew across the country, they could still finish top two, and they could still miss the eight. But they travel particularly well, and you can usually tell within about two minutes whether Good Brisbane has made the trip. You could tell straight away against Geelong and Collingwood and so it proved again on Friday night. Every time a Lion had the ball, his eyes would shift slightly off centre. He'd give the international sporting sign for 'come at me' and he'd successfully bite off the kick. They were so sharp, so precise, so methodical. This is the game they seek, the game that won them a premiership. It's chip, chip, chip football but it's far from boring. And it's so draining for the opposition. Normally backing their ability to mow down teams in the last quarter, the Dockers were chasing backsides, dragging their heels, and contemplating a mini-elimination-final date with Messrs Bontempelli, Darcy and Naughton.
Daily Mail
3 hours ago
- Daily Mail
Moses Itauma reminds me of a young Mike Tyson... it's a matter of when not if he wins a title, writes JEFF POWELL
Not since Mike Tyson started thundering towards his prime has boxing witnessed such ominous power punching from a novice. Saturday night's demolition of dear old Dillian Whyte in Riyadh begs the question as to when – not if – Moses Itauma will win a world heavyweight title. Iron Mike began his reign of terror by felling bigger American brothers like trees. Holy Moses, the new kid on the chopping block is English. Albeit by way of immigration to Chatham from Slovakia when he was four years of age. If today's prize-fighters boxed as frequently at their predecessors Itauma might well have broken Tyson's record as the youngest heavyweight champion of them all. As it is now, he looks destined to strap on one of those glitzy alpha-belts when just 21. This latest sojourn in the desert is by no means the first time he has despatched an opponent in less than two rounds. The 13th victory on his unbeaten record followed knock outs that rapid in ten of the previous 12 fights. As for Whyte, he was gone in 119 seconds. While he was unscrambling his senses all the talk turned to who should be next on Itauma's deadly dance card. His Excellency Turki Al-Sheikh, whose investment of hundreds of millions of Saudi Arabia's oil dollars is revolutionising big-time boxing, was quick to propose undisputed world heavyweight champion Oleksandr Usyk. Wiser counsellors mention New Zealand's rejuvenated former world champion Joseph Parker and Germany's own undefeated knock-out artist Agit Kabayel, who Itauma generously declared deserving of their shots at the title 'before I take over.' And why not? Daniel Dubois, despite being knocked out twice by Usyk, is young enough to come back and still carries the dynamite punch which destroyed Anthony Joshua. He and Itauma would be a case of who lands first wins. As for Usyk himself, at 38 he believes he has two fights left in him following his destruction of Daniel Dubois. Ukraine's grandmaster of the Noble Art could offer Parker a chance before cashing out with a nine-figure bonanza against YouTube and now Netflix cult sensation Jake Paul. Potentially that would set up Itauma to fight for the vacant title late next summer. Whoever gets the nod will surely offer sterner resistance than Whyte. The self-styled Body Snatcher was clutching at straws while being mown down. The pre-fight wisdom perceived his only chance to be taking Itauma into the later rounds he is yet to experience. A curious prediction since he is 18 years older than his young tormentor. When weighing in at his lightest for 10 years, Whyte pronounced himself fitter than ever after training like a dervish. He might as well have spared himself those stern rigours in camp and simply turned up to take his punishment and his reported three and a half million dollars reward. He hardly threw a punch and did not land one as Itauma pummelled him from the first – and only – bell. A combination of range-finders set him up for the left hook which turned Whyte's legs to jelly, followed by the southpaw right which dropped him to his knees. Game as old pros are, Whyte stumbled to his feet but as he slumped back against the ropes the referee saved him from losing too many of his marbles. For the Body Snatcher, retirement calls. For Holy Moses a golden future beckons as the heavyweight era of Anthony Joshua, Tyson Fury and most importantly Oleksandr Usyk nears its end and he stands ready to usher in the next generation.
