{"id":418435,"date":"2026-01-17T05:30:08","date_gmt":"2026-01-17T05:30:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/418435\/"},"modified":"2026-01-17T05:30:08","modified_gmt":"2026-01-17T05:30:08","slug":"australian-ibf-world-champion-jai-opetaia-signs-with-dana-whites-zuffa-boxing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/418435\/","title":{"rendered":"Australian IBF world champion Jai Opetaia signs with Dana White’s Zuffa Boxing"},"content":{"rendered":"

Australian IBF and The Ring cruiserweight champion Jai Opetaia<\/a> has made a shock move to join Dana White’s new boxing promotion Zuffa Boxing.<\/p>\n

The announcement came via Zuffa Boxing’s X account, with a video of Opetaia confirming the signing.<\/p>\n

“I’m with Zuffa Boxing now,” Opetaia said. “I’m pumped for the future. Exciting times, man. Let’s get these big fights over the line: unification and undisputed too. Let’s go.”<\/p>\n

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It’s unclear if Opetaia would be competing exclusively on Zuffa Boxing cards or if he will be allowed to continue fighting for world titles for other sanctioning bodies. <\/p>\n

Opetaia, 30, has voiced frustration with being unable to land a unification fight with the division’s other champions.<\/p>\n

Noel Mikaelian holds the WBC title while Gilberto “Zurdo” Ramirez is the WBO and WBA champion.<\/p>\n

\"Jai<\/p>\n

Jai Opetaia.\u00a0Getty<\/p>\n

Ramirez will defend his unified titles against David Benavidez in May.<\/p>\n

Opetaia is widely regarded as the best cruiserweight in the sport and is coming off a brutal eighth-round knockout of Huseyin Cinkara in December, his fourth consecutive knockout win.<\/p>\n

He has successfully defended his belt five times.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Australian IBF and The Ring cruiserweight champion Jai Opetaia has made a shock move to join Dana White’s…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":418436,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[571],"tags":[64,63,802,85],"class_list":["post-418435","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-boxing","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-boxing","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/418435","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=418435"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/418435\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/418436"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=418435"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=418435"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=418435"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}