Jai Opetaia is still the clear No. 1 cruiserweight in the world following a dominant win over Brandon Glanton on tonight\u2019s Zuffa Boxing card from Las Vegas.<\/p>\n
Opetaia improved to 30-0 (23 KO) with the victory, which was perhaps somewhat bittersweet as he was stripped of his IBF title over the weekend, due to an issue between the sanctioning body and the Zuffa crew. Opetaia still holds the Ring Magazine championship, for what it\u2019s worth, and is now the first-ever Zuffa Boxing world champion, period, as their new title belt was on the line, even if it is meant, technically, only as a \u201ctrophy\u201d or \u201ctrinket\u201d at the moment.<\/p>\n
Opetaia vs Glanton score cards<\/p>\n
Opetaia won the fight by unanimous decision on three scores of 119-106, which was also the unofficial score Bad Left Hook had. It was a clear shutout for Opetaia, but he was deducted a point for holding in the 11th round. Referee Allen Huggins also took points from Glanton for holding in round six, and low blows in round eight.<\/p>\n
Glanton falls to 21-4 (18 KO) and comes up short once again at the higher level, but took his highly-respected toughness to another level this evening, perhaps, absorbing a pretty nasty beating from Opetaia over the full 12 rounds without going down.<\/p>\n
\u201cI knew Brandon was going to bring it, I knew he was tough as nails,\u201d Opetaia said after the fight.<\/p>\n
Opetaia and the \u201cZuffa championship\u201d<\/p>\n
When asked after the fight against whom he may want to defend his Zuffa title, Opetaia sort of side-stepped the question and said he remains focused on unifying the recognized world titles that have been in place for decades now, including potentially regaining the IBF belt he was stripped of this weekend.<\/p>\n
When Opetaia said he still aims to go undisputed at cruiserweight, Zuffa commentator Max Kellerman oddly attempted to convince Opetaia that he is undisputed already because he is recognized near unanimously as the top cruiserweight in the sport by fans and pundits, even if he doesn\u2019t have all \u2014 or any \u2014 of the titles that are recognized as forming boxing\u2019s undisputed championship.<\/p>\n
Opetaia also said he does want to face the winner of the big May fight between WBA and WBO unified titleholder Gilberto \u201cZurdo\u201d Ramirez and David Benavidez.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Jai Opetaia is still the clear No. 1 cruiserweight in the world following a dominant win over Brandon…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":524239,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[447],"tags":[703,1147,49,48,82],"class_list":["post-524238","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-boxing","tag-boxing","tag-boxing-results","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/524238","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=524238"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/524238\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/524239"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=524238"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=524238"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=524238"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}