Jai Opetaia Dominates Brandon Glanton in Vegas

Jai Opetaia’s American debut was meant to answer two questions, one official and one practical. The official one had been muddied before a punch was thrown, the IBF having withdrawn sanctioning from the bout after a dispute over Zuffa’s championship belt, leaving Opetaia to enter the ring no longer recognised by that body as its cruiserweight champion. The practical question was simpler and rather more important. Could Brandon Glanton, aggressive, durable and generally unrewarding to box against, drag the Australian into the sort of uncomfortable, scruffy fight that tells us something new? By the end of 12 rounds at the Meta Apex in Las Vegas, the answer was no. Opetaia won a unanimous decision by three identical scores of 119-106, retained The Ring championship and collected Zuffa’s inaugural cruiserweight belt besides.

The fight was not without effort, but it was short on suspense. Glanton came with the habits that have carried him this far, shoulders hunched, feet set to close distance, intent on making the ring small and the night ugly. On another evening, that might have been enough to create anxiety. Here, it merely gave Opetaia something to hit. The Australian southpaw established the shape of the contest early with his feet before he did so fully with his hands, sliding off at angles, moving smoothly along the perimeter when he wished, then standing his ground when Glanton entered too squarely. He found him first with straight lefts and jabs, then began to thread the uppercut through the middle, a punch that would become the evening’s most persuasive argument.

By the second and third rounds, the pattern had settled into one of those contests in which one man is always arriving a fraction too late and paying interest on the journey. Glanton was brave enough and willing enough, but bravery is not much use when it is attached to slow hands, and a leaky approach against a southpaw who can judge range as well as Opetaia can. Every attempt to come inside brought a reminder. A jab upstairs, a left hand behind it, then the uppercut as the distance collapsed. Glanton’s guard was often in place, but it was the sort of defensive shell that protects dignity more than territory. Opetaia was landing around it, through it and sometimes in spite of it.

The middle rounds confirmed that this was less a contest of power than of precision. Glanton had moments of industry and landed the odd right hand, enough to prove he had attended for more than punishment, but he was almost always made to regret it. In the fourth and fifth, Opetaia’s uppercut began to do particularly useful work, jolting Glanton as he came forward and discouraging the sort of chest-to-chest mauling that might have disrupted the favourite’s rhythm. When they did end up in close, Opetaia was better there as well, which was perhaps the most telling element of the night. He did not merely boss the fight at range. He also won the pockets, working head and body in the clinches and short exchanges, while Glanton, for all his intent, too often looked like a man wrestling with the wrong kind of geometry.

There was a ragged side to it all, and one suspects that Glanton, finding orthodox methods of success in short supply, felt he had little choice. He was deducted a point in the sixth round for holding and another in the eighth for low blows. Opetaia, not entirely innocent once the fight had descended into those untidy clinches, lost a point himself in the eleventh for holding. None of it altered the destination of the result. If anything, it merely underlined the degree of frustration in Glanton’s corner and the degree of comfort in the other one. A man does not usually resort to spoiling unless he has decided that boxing is no longer paying dividends.

What kept the fight from becoming a complete procession was Glanton’s toughness, which was real and considerable. Opetaia hurt him more than once, especially as the bout moved into the championship rounds, and there were times, the tenth in particular, when it seemed a stoppage might yet save everyone the administrative business of reading cards nobody needed. But Glanton took the punishment, kept coming, and, in the final round, survived another sharp assault when Opetaia again landed flush with the straight left and followed with combinations. He was badly outclassed, yes, but not folded. In another sort of report, that would be called a moral victory. In a proper one, it is simply called lasting the course.

For Opetaia, this was a fine advertisement of what makes him the most convincing cruiserweight in the world to watch, even amid the alphabet confusion that continues to orbit the division. He is not merely heavy-handed, though he is that. He is economical, poised and unusually adaptable. Against Glanton, he showed that he can dominate at long range, punish on the inside and remain calm when a fight threatens to become coarse. The scorecards, 119-106 across the board, told the truth without embellishment. So did Glanton’s face by the finish, marked up and battered after 12 rounds of trying to solve a problem for which he had no lasting answer. Opetaia spoke afterwards of chasing belts and of the hope that the politics might yet be sorted out. On this evidence, the boxing part of the matter is rather clearer than the paperwork.