Deontay Wilder vs Jai Opetaia: Could the Fight Join the Fury vs Joshua Undercard?

It could, but as of 22 October 2026 Deontay Wilder vs Jai Opetaia has not been announced for the Tyson Fury vs Anthony Joshua card at Principality Stadium, Cardiff, on Friday 11 December 2026. Dana White, who promotes Opetaia, says the Australian is “more than likely” to box on the undercard, and Wilder's manager says they have accepted an offer, but no contract has been made public and no undercard bout has been named.

Last updated: 22 October 2026.

Here's the tea. Most undercard rumours are filler, names floated to keep a fight in the news for a week. This one is properly strange. An unbeaten cruiserweight who has spent four years as The Ring's champion at 200lb, stepping up to face a man with 43 knockouts on his record, on a night that already carries the biggest all-British heavyweight fight in years. And just to make it messier, a former kickboxing champion says he has been offered the same opponent for the same night.

It might come to nothing. If it happens, it changes what the Cardiff card is.

Who said what, and when: the full rumour trail

The trail is short, and that matters before anyone treats this as done. On 8 October, The Ring's Mike Coppinger reported that the fight was being explored for 11 December. He then added his own view, writing “Love the idea of this fight!” and noting that Wilder “still presents danger as a massive puncher.” That is a well-connected reporter liking a match, which is not the same as a match being made.

Two days later, on 10 October, Sky Sports ran the story with a direct quote from White: “Jai Opetaia is more than likely going to be on the undercard.” White described the Wilder bout as a very dangerous one for Opetaia, and in the same conversation said his fighter “really wants” David Benavidez, adding that they need to “figure that one out.” So the promoter has confirmed the intention to put Opetaia on the bill. He has not confirmed the opponent.

Wilder's side has gone further in public than Opetaia's. Boxing News reported on 10 October that his manager, Shelly Finkel, had told the reporter Dan Rafael they had accepted an offer for Wilder to face Opetaia in the co-feature and were awaiting word on whether it was a go. The same report said there had also been talks about Wilder facing the WBA titleholder Murat Gassiev. Accepting an offer is not signing a contract, and nobody has claimed paperwork exists.

On 13 October, Chris Billam-Smith, the former WBO cruiserweight champion, told Sky Sports: “From what I gather he's going to fight Wilder and then Benavidez.” He also volunteered himself as the understudy. “If Opetaia was to pull out of the Wilder fight, I could fight Wilder,” he said. Billam-Smith has his own fight with Cheavon Clarke on 7 November, so read that as a boxer keeping his options open rather than a source on contracts.

The plot thickens: Rico Verhoeven says he said yes to Wilder too

Rico Verhoeven, the former kickboxing champion who lost to Oleksandr Usyk in May, says he has been offered Wilder for the same card. “What I can confirm is that they offered me a fight with Deontay Wilder, and I said yes,” he told talkSPORT. And then the line that sums up the whole saga: “So if there is a yes from the other side, then it is going to happen.”

Boxing News reported on 17 October that Verhoeven was still waiting on Wilder's side and that contract details were not agreed. Two men saying yes to the same opponent is about the clearest sign you will get that nothing is signed. It also tells you who the fixed point in this conversation is. Somebody badly wants Deontay Wilder in Cardiff. The argument is over who stands opposite him.

What is actually confirmed about Fury vs Joshua

The main event is not in doubt. Fury vs Joshua was announced on 24 September 2026 for Friday 11 December at Principality Stadium, with Netflix streaming it live to its members worldwide. The show is a collaboration between The Ring, owned by Turki Alalshikh, and Dana White. The launch press conference took place at Olympia in London on 30 September.

The announcement promised a supporting card of big names and named none of them. The timing is clearer. Sky Sports reported on 8 October that Cardiff Council had been asked to approve a 1am ringwalk, to suit peak viewing in the United States, with the stadium open until 3.30am and the roof shut. The licence change had yet to be secured, so treat 1am as the plan rather than the promise.

There is a belt on the line as well. Sky Sports reported on 25 September that, according to The Ring, the fight is set to be for the vacant WBA “super” heavyweight title that Oleksandr Usyk gave up. For anyone planning a group trip to Principality Stadium, that means building the evening around a very late finish rather than a fixed hour. Our guide to what time a big fight night starts is worth five minutes before you plan dinner.

If you want the long back story of how this fight finally got made, our piece on the Fury vs Joshua rumours and dates covers it. The Joshua vs Fury tale of the tape puts the two of them side by side. Tyson Fury has his own page. So does Anthony Joshua.

Deontay Wilder at 41: is his right hand still the scariest thing in boxing?

Wilder turned 41 on 22 October 2026, and his record stands at 45 wins, 4 losses and 1 draw, with 43 of those wins by knockout. Read that ratio twice. Forty-three stoppages from 45 wins is the reason he keeps getting big fights long after the results turned against him.

And the results did turn. He lost the third Fury fight in Las Vegas in October 2021, flattened Robert Helenius in one round in Brooklyn a year later, then lost a unanimous decision to Joseph Parker in Riyadh in December 2023 and was stopped by Zhilei Zhang in Riyadh in June 2024. A seventh-round stoppage of Tyrrell Anthony Herndon in Wichita in June 2025 steadied things. Barely.

Then came Derek Chisora on 4 April 2026 at The Arena, London. It was not pretty. Wilder took a split decision, 115-111 and 115-113 on two cards, with the third judge scoring it 115-112 for Chisora. Wilder knocked Chisora through the ropes in the eighth and lost a point in the same round for a push. Chisora put him down in the eleventh. The Ring called it an ugly brawl, and I can't argue.

Wilder weighed 226.4lb for that fight, and Chisora 266.7lb, the heaviest he had ever been. Hold on to the 226.4lb figure. It matters in a minute. We previewed that night in The Last War: Wilder vs Chisora. The rest of his career is on his Deontay Wilder profile.

My read on Wilder now: the legs and the work rate are not what they were when he was WBC champion, and the Chisora fight showed a man who throws far less than he used to. The right hand is still the right hand, though. Against a big heavyweight who walks straight in, that is a danger. Against a smaller man who has to step inside to land his own shots, it might be a bigger one.

Jai Opetaia: the cruiserweight nobody has solved

Opetaia is 31-0 with 24 knockouts. Born in Sydney and raised on the Central Coast of New South Wales, he boxed for Australia at the London 2012 Olympics, the youngest boxer ever named in an Australian Olympic team, and made his professional debut in August 2015. He has held The Ring cruiserweight title since 2 July 2022.

His belt collection is messy, and none of the mess happened in the ring. The IBF stripped him in December 2023, he won the title back in May 2024, and the IBF stripped him again in March 2026. In January 2026 he signed with Dana White's Zuffa Boxing, won its inaugural cruiserweight title against Brandon Glanton on 8 March, and on 12 September stopped Noel Mikaelian in the ninth round at T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas to add the vacant WBA (Regular) belt.

Here is the twist. A year ago he did not want this. In August 2025, when Eddie Hearn, then his promoter, suggested he might have to leave cruiserweight if a unification fight did not come soon, Opetaia brushed it off and said he was focused on unifying the cruiserweight titles. What has changed is the calendar. The unification fight he wants most, against Benavidez, cannot happen before 2027, because Benavidez is busy in December. Opetaia needs a big night in the meantime, and Cardiff on 11 December is the biggest night going.

Opetaia's key fights, in order

• 2 July 2022: outpointed Mairis Briedis on the Gold Coast to win the IBF and Ring titles.
• 30 September 2023: stopped Jordan Thompson in the fourth round in London.
• 23 December 2023: knocked out Ellis Zorro in the first round in Riyadh.
• 18 May 2024: beat Briedis again on points in Riyadh to win back the vacant IBF belt.
• 12 October 2024: stopped Jack Massey in round six, again in Riyadh.
• 8 January 2025 to 6 December 2025: three knockouts on the Gold Coast, against David Nyika, Claudio Squeo and Huseyin Cinkara.
• 8 March 2026: outpointed Brandon Glanton over 12 rounds in Nevada for the first Zuffa Boxing cruiserweight title.
• 12 September 2026: stopped Noel Mikaelian in the ninth at the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas.

Seven of his last ten fights ended early. Every one of those opponents was a cruiserweight.

Tale of the tape: Wilder vs Opetaia side by side

Five inches of height and seven of reach is a lot of ground for a southpaw to make up against a man whose best punch is the right hand. Opetaia's answer sits further down: Wilder has lost two of his last five.

The 26lb problem, in plain numbers

Cruiserweight tops out at 200lb, or 90.7kg. Heavyweight has no upper limit at all. Between the two, the WBC created a division called bridgerweight in November 2020, running from 200lb to 224lb, though it has never caught on with the IBF or the WBO and nobody is suggesting this fight would be for a bridgerweight belt.

So even the lean version of Wilder who weighed in for Chisora was more than 26lb above the limit Opetaia has made for his entire professional career. Sky Sports described the fight as Opetaia's first high-level heavyweight test. Nothing published so far says whether there would be a catchweight written into the contract, a ceiling on how heavy Wilder can come in. Nobody has reported one, so I would treat it as a straight heavyweight fight until told otherwise.

Does 26lb decide it? Not on its own. Oleksandr Usyk moved from cruiserweight to heavyweight in 2019 and has beaten every heavyweight put in front of him since. But Usyk moved up for good and rebuilt his body around the new division. Opetaia would be doing it for one night, against a puncher, and then, according to Sky Sports, heading back down to 200lb to chase Benavidez. If I were in his corner, that is the part I would lose sleep over. Not Wilder's right hand. The cut back down afterwards.

Usyk's own journey, and the question of whether Benavidez could ever make the opposite one, is in our explainer on Usyk vs Benavidez.

Cruiserweights who moved up: two legends and a warning

Opetaia would not be the first 200lb champion to try the big men, and history is kinder than you might think. Evander Holyfield became the first undisputed cruiserweight champion by stopping Carlos De León in April 1988, moved up that summer, and knocked out Buster Douglas in three rounds in October 1990 to become undisputed heavyweight champion. It is the same road Oleksandr Usyk took three decades later.

David Haye did it the British way. He took the WBA and WBC cruiserweight titles from Jean-Marc Mormeck in Paris in November 2007, and in November 2009 outpointed Nikolay Valuev in Nuremberg for the WBA heavyweight title. Then Tony Bellew, still the WBC cruiserweight champion, moved up and stopped Haye at The Arena, London in March 2017, and did it again in May 2018.

The warning is Roy Jones Jr. The former middleweight champion beat John Ruiz for the WBA heavyweight title in March 2003 at 193lb, then shed 24lb to get back to the 175lb light heavyweight limit and looked slower for it. Antonio Tarver knocked him out in two rounds in May 2004. Going up is one problem. Coming back down, which is Opetaia's plan, is the other.

Benavidez weighs in: “I don't want Jai to fight Wilder”

This one's for the group chat. The man with the most to lose from this fight isn't in it. David Benavidez, who wants Opetaia next year, told the Last Stand podcast, as Boxing News reported on 19 October: “I don't want Jai to fight Wilder. With Wilder, he has that right hand.” He wasn't finished. Opetaia, he said, “gets hit a lot,” and “If you give him the opportunity, he's going to find that right hand.”

Is that concern, or a bit of gamesmanship? Probably both. Benavidez gets to warn Opetaia off a risky night and plant a doubt about his defence in one interview. Not bad for a man who isn't even on the card.

Why Wilder suits the Cardiff card, and why it still might not happen

The storyline writes itself. Wilder shared a trilogy with Fury and came close to fighting Joshua before he lost to Parker, as Sky Sports pointed out. Putting him on a Fury vs Joshua card gives the broadcast a ready-made thread: the man both headliners know, against the outsider who wants to prove a cruiserweight belongs. Netflix is putting this show in front of a global audience that may know Wilder's name far better than Opetaia's, and that matters to the people building the card.

Against that, there is a queue. World Boxing News listed Filip Hrgovic vs Frank Sanchez, Richardson Hitchins vs Keyshawn Davis, Abdullah Mason vs Joe Cordina, a possible Rico Verhoeven appearance and a possible Manny Pacquiao appearance among the eight bouts linked to the card, with none confirmed. A stadium show can only carry so many big fights before the main event starts late, and something will fall away. Add the Gassiev talks and the Verhoeven offer, and Wilder alone has three possible opponents for one date.

How big Cardiff undercards have come together before

If this card looks chaotic now, that is normal. The first time Joshua topped the bill at this stadium, against Carlos Takam on 28 October 2017, Takam was not even the planned opponent. Kubrat Pulev was, until rumours of an injury surfaced less than two weeks out. Eddie Hearn said Takam, kept on standby, stepped in on just 12 days' notice. That standby role is exactly the one Chris Billam-Smith has offered to play this time.

The supporting cast that night shows how these bills get built. Dillian Whyte beat Robert Helenius, the same Helenius that Wilder flattened in one round five years later. Katie Taylor won the vacant WBA lightweight title, while Lawrence Okolie and Joshua Buatsi boxed early on. Joe Cordina, now linked with Abdullah Mason for December, was on the untelevised part of the card. If Wilder is added this time, he is the heavyweight name in support. More nights built this way are on our high-profile undercard fights page.

What it would mean for Benavidez and the cruiserweight picture

David Benavidez has held the WBA and WBO cruiserweight titles since he stopped Gilberto Ramirez in Las Vegas on 2 May 2026. His next fight is reported to be against the WBC champion Michal Cieslak in Arizona in early December. The latest report puts it on 5 December, after earlier reports said 12 December in Phoenix, and nothing has been formally announced.

Benavidez has been clear about what comes after that. “The fight that I got to honor first is the fight with Opetaia because I told him I'd fight him Cinco de Mayo next year,” he said in an interview reported on 18 October. So if both men win in December, the obvious next fight is Benavidez vs Opetaia in May 2027, with most of the cruiserweight belts on the table.

Now picture Wilder landing one right hand in Cardiff. The May fight loses a lot of its shine overnight, and Opetaia's unbeaten record, the thing that makes him the opponent Benavidez wants, is gone. That is the gamble White is taking. It is a fair one for a promoter trying to make a star. It is a bigger one for the fighter.

If you are thinking about Cardiff on 11 December

Whatever ends up underneath it, the headline is fixed: Fury and Joshua at Principality Stadium, on a Friday night in the middle of the city. The stadium sits on the River Taff, a short walk from Cardiff Central station, which makes it one of the easier big-fight venues in Britain for a group arriving by train.

Principality Stadium, Cardiff, seen from Westgate Street in 2022. Photo: Dominic Nelson, CC BY-SA 4.0

Our Fury vs Joshua event page is where you can register your interest in hospitality for the night, and it will be updated as the undercard is announced. If I were taking a client group, I would plan on the undercard mattering more than usual. If Opetaia vs Wilder is on, it is likely to sit high on the bill, and you will not want your guests still at the table when the first bell goes. Check the running order before you settle dinner timings.

For everything else on the boxing calendar, our major boxing fights page is the place to start.

Anthony Joshua against Carlos Takam at Principality Stadium, Cardiff, in October 2017. Photo: Seth Whales, CC BY-SA 4.0

My read: does it happen, and who wins?

Cards on the table: I think it happens, narrowly. White wants Opetaia on the card, Wilder needs a fight that keeps his name near the top of the division, and the Cardiff show needs a second storyline a casual Netflix viewer will understand in one sentence. What could stop it is ordinary stuff: money, a cleaner option for either man (Gassiev for Wilder, or Verhoeven), or the card simply running out of room.

If it does happen, I lean towards Opetaia. He is younger, busier and the better boxer, and Wilder in April looked like a man relying on one punch. But I would not tell anyone it is safe, and neither would Benavidez. The whole point of Deontay Wilder, at 41, with 43 knockouts behind him, is that one right hand ends the argument. Opetaia has never been hit by a heavyweight who punches like that.