Anthony Joshua vs Andy Ruiz Jnr
Somethings, you just can’t predict and the Anthony Joshua vs Andy Ruiz Jnr fight was one of them. You might think you know how something is going to go before it happens, but we can never really know for sure, and if there is one thing a lifetime love of boxing has taught me, is all it takes is one punch to change a fight and alter the plot forever. In the lead up to Anthony Joshua’s much anticipated US debut, it really did seem like nothing was going to plan. His initially scheduled opponent Jarrell “Big Baby” Miller tested positive for several strings of letters which for all intents and purposes aren’t allowed, causing the New York State Athletic Commission to deny him a license to box, and ultimately leading to his removal from the card. In his place steps Andy Ruiz Jnr a legitimate heavyweight with a 32-1 record, but yet was given little to no chance against the Brit, being treated more like a sacrificial lamb than a genuine contender by many. The stage was set, Saturday, June 1st at Madison Square Garden and on 6 weeks notice Ruiz looked to do the seemingly impossible, and carve his name into the history books and write his very own real-life Rocky moment.
Ruiz defeats Joshua TKO 7th Rnd
All eyes were on Anthony Joshua undeniably, everyone expected him to win, and to win well. So when he came back to his corner after the second round with his hands on the ropes, and his gumshield sticking out his mouth alarm bells already started to ring. Anthony Joshua looked gassed, uninterested, unfocused, but when he dropped Ruiz in the third, you wouldn’t have been a fool to think that would be all she wrote for this contest. Yet when Ruiz got up seemingly unfazed by the Brits power, there was no reaction from Joshua, and Ruiz capitalised moments later with a flurry of punches sending his opponent to the canvas. Only Joshua did not rise for the count with the same obvious disdain as Ruiz and instead stayed defensive for the remainder of the round and just before the bell getting dropped once again. From the third round onwards it was clear he wasn’t himself, and the eventual seventh-round TKO finish for Ruiz seemed almost inevitable. For me, it felt like the fight ended with that first knockdown in the third, and from there on out, the script had been rewritten.
Anthony Joshua pre fight
Much speculation has been circulating after the fight as to what went wrong for the Brit in his rather disastrous stateside debut. There has been speculation that Joshua was knocked down in sparring in the immediate build-up to the fight as well as rumours Joshua had been suffering from illness, the second of which is almost certainly true to some degree. Joshua’s voice was flagged as early as Monday to have a nasally feel, evident signs of some sort of cold or maybe being run down but perhaps not enough to explain away his performance. The most surprising thing to me is that after the second round. If you look at some of the TV footage, he says to trainer Robert McCracken “why do I feel like this?” If he had a cold, if he had been knocked out badly in sparring, Anthony wouldn’t be asking Rob McCracken why he felt like that – he would have known why he felt like that and feeling so rough so early in the fight. His team after the bout most certainly acknowledged that he was tired following a gruelling schedule but rumours of a panic attack backstage before he walked out to the ring where aggressively refuted by promoter Eddie Hearn as “absolute nonsense; he was ice on legs. Got knocked out in sparring? No, he didn’t. The build-up, the training camp, the organisation – he’s got 22 people in his team, and every single whim is catered for. It’s a very professional organisation. Absolutely zero excuses.”
Joshua vs Ruiz Rematch
The only doubt in my head about the validity of Eddie Hearns statement comes from Robert Joshua’s reaction straight after the fight was over. Anthony’s dad, shouted at Eddie Hearn in the ring immediately after the battle, with Anthony forced to intervene. That sparked speculation Joshua was maybe pushed into fighting when he wasn’t fully fit. We can read into this what we will, but of course, very little facts are actually known. Of course, we can dismiss this as just a passionate exchange after his son’s first loss, or perhaps something a lot more worryingly grounded in facts, after all, there is no smoke without fire, and it would explain a hell of a lot about what really went on in there. It could also be the case that Joshua just simply underestimated Ruiz, and Ruiz rose to the occasion. I think it is essential to acknowledge that although Joshua was the favourite, he was not fighting a total bum. Andy Ruiz Jnr is without a doubt a tougher opponent that Jarrell Miller was ever going to be, and as the great Muhammed Ali once said: “there are a lot of good fights, and it’ll be just my luck I run into one of them when they decide to be great”. In the Heavyweight there is no such thing as an easy fight at the top level. We will probably never know what actually happened to Joshua in the lead up to the bout, but what we do know is with Joshua exercising the rematch clause in the contract, we will get to see if it was just a blip or a much bigger problem. Only time will tell.
