Promoter wants young puncher to face Australian champion.
Jai Opetaia is almost without peer amongst the cruiserweights. Despite only holding one of the alphabet titles, he is considered the best 200-pound fighter on the planet.
After emerging from obscurity in 2022 to defeat Mairis Briedis, Opetaia has continued to take care of every man put in front of him, sometimes in horrifying fashion.
In 2025, Opetaia knocked David Nyika and Hüseyin Cinkara out cold, resulting in worrying scenes where spectators worried for the fighters’ wellbeing. That same year, he fractured Claudio Squeo’s jaw in two places, with the surgeon who operated on Squeo calling it “the worst broken jaw I’ve ever seen”.
Such results will not make anyone eager to fight you, but Opetaia is expected to make his next defence against outspoken American Brandon Glanton. Eddie Hearn, though (previously responsible for promoting Opetaia), is wanting a fighter from the opposite side of the pond to challenge the dangerous Australian.
This fighter is Matchroom Boxing’s own Pat Brown, and Hearn was quoted as saying, “Pat’s next fight will also be announced this week. That will be headlining the first week of April. Listen; you know how highly I think of Pat. I just think this guy’s an absolute monster. I wanna get him in with Jai Opetaia ASAP.”
One glance at their records will reveal a massive disparity between the two in terms of experience. Opetaia (29-0, 23 KOs) has had almost six times as many fights as Brown (5-0, 5 KOs), not to mention the time he’s spent at the top level.
However, Brown has made a lot of people very excited in his potential in less than a year in the professional circuit. The former Olympian has only gone past the second round on one occasion, and he will be hoping to get the necessary rounds in before he faces world-level competition.
Opetaia is no stranger to facing British foes, having made the first defence of his title by brutalising Jordan Thompson before erasing Ellis Zorro in one round. Most recently, he stopped the durable Jack Massey in his last encounter with a U.K. fighter.
Perhaps Brown can break that streak, but Eddie Hearn is aware that it’s far too early at the moment, saying that Brown “needs another 2, 3, 4 fights”.
In the meantime, Hearn would like Brown to fight Queensberry Promotions’s nightmarish puncher Aloys Junior, stating, “I want to get Pat into a mandatory position for a world title by the end of the year. The fight that I really want is Pat Brown against Aloys [Junior]. I think that’s a tremendous fight. Aloys is all action, big puncher. I mean, that would be an absolute barnburner.”
Any option for Brown is a very interesting one, and the opponent for his next bout is yet to be revealed. Here’s hoping we find out this week.
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