LAS VEGAS – As bitter as the events surrounding the loss of his IBF cruiserweight belt are, Jai Opetaia didn’t have a cross word to say about the powers that be connected to the decision.

“Just … the politics. I broke my jaw for this belt.  I couldn’t eat for four months,” Australia’s Opetaia said following his Sunday night victory by three 119-106 scores over Atlanta’s Brandon Glanton. “I missed time with my family. Missed [a family member’s] funeral. They don’t see the sacrifices I’ve made for this. To just have, ‘We’re going to strip it,’ it hurts. 

Opetaia 30-0 is expected to formally learn Monday that the IBF, in opting not to sanction Sunday’s bout because it was also staged for the new Zuffa Boxing belt along with The Ring strap, will vacate the cruiserweight title and ultimately assign the next two contenders to fight for it.

Opetaia? He’ll be fine. He spoke after the fight of next meeting new WBC cruiserweight Noel Mikaelian and then fighting the May 2 winner of the WBO/WBA title fight between unified champion Gilberto “Zurdo” Ramirez and David Benavidez by year’s end.

“I would love to get Mikaelian next – a good fight, a unification fight,” Opetaia, 30, said. “This is what we’re chasing. Right now, he’s got nothing on, and I’m chasing him. It’s perfect. Then, end of the year, undisputed. That’s the perfect picture, but there’s a lot of moving parts to it.”

And Opetaia is just off seeing how those moving parts can disintegrate and implode.

Opetaia knew his move from Eddie Hearn’s Matchroom Boxing to Zuffa could imperil his belt, since Zuffa Boxing head Dana White has so repeatedly communicated that he’d rather avoid working with the four major sanctioning bodies.

Still, it appeared the IBF would allow Opetaia to pay his sanctioning fees and retain his strap until Friday, when IBF President Daryl Peoples ordered his supervisor, Levi Martinez, to return home to New Mexico and distributed a statement saying the fight would not be sanctioned.

Zuffa officials said they received an email from Peoples saying he was “embarrassed” by the position of the IBF belt on the Friday news conference stage.

White torched the IBF in his post-fight comments.

Opetaia, meanwhile, brought the belt on the table before him after honoring the IBF’s second-day weigh-in and making weight by three pounds.

“It’s a bit frustrating, but I really hope … as of now, I’m not stripped,” he said late Sunday night. “I honestly don’t know what’s going on. I just try to keep doing my thing, I’ve respected the belt, done everything in my power to keep the belt. I had the double weigh-in, abided by their rules.I’m really hoping they can put the nonsense aside. The beef is not between me. It’s the outside causing conflict and I’m the only one who’s suffering, but at the same time, it is what it is.

“What can I do? Train hard and work for the next one.”

Frankly, no one dethroned Opetaia as IBF champion, and his pursuit of Mikaelian and the Ramirez-Benavidez winner could happen given the past involvement of Saudi Arabia boxing financier Turki Alalshikh in fights involving all four champions.

BoxingScene learned Zuffa Boxing officials will attend Ramirez-Benavidez with an eye on matching the winner against Opetaia for The Ring lineal belt.

Opetaia placed The Ring, Zuffa and IBF belts before him after Sunday night’s victory.

Of the one that looks to escape him, Opetaia said, “It means something to me, a lot of effort went into winning that.”