Andy Ruiz Jr: The Giant Slayer's Last Chance
The first time Andy Ruiz Jr walked into heavyweight history, he came in through a side door.
Five weeks’ notice. An 11-1 underdog. A late replacement for a disgraced challenger. Then came that night at Madison Square Garden, when the chubby kid from Imperial, California, climbed off the canvas, dropped Anthony Joshua four times and ripped away three heavyweight belts in seven astonishing rounds.
The “Mexican Rocky” was born. So was a whirlwind that nearly blew him away.
From Mexican Rocky to one-and-done
In the space of a few delirious months, Ruiz’s life went from small-town gyms and border crossings to presidential meetings and late-night TV. He toured studios, shook hands with Andrés Manuel López Obrador, signed a $10m guarantee for the rematch and watched the spoils of shock glory pile up: money, cars, attention, women. All of it at once.
Six months later, it was gone.
The return with Joshua, staged in the sand and glare of Diriyah, Saudi Arabia, exposed what the party had cost. Ruiz showed up 15lb heavier than in New York, his training camp shortened by his own choices and his focus clearly elsewhere. Joshua boxed safely, reclaimed his WBA, IBF and WBO titles on points, and Ruiz joined the sport’s cruelest club – the heavyweight champions whose reigns feel like misprints: Buster Douglas, Leon Spinks, James J Braddock … and now Andy Ruiz Jr.
At a raw, 3am press conference, face marked and voice flat, Ruiz admitted what everyone had seen. He’d been overconfident. He hadn’t trained right. He hadn’t taken it seriously. The regret hung in the air.
Then he disappeared.
A career stuck in neutral
Ruiz, who turns 37 next week, has boxed only three times in the more than six years since that first Joshua fight. Weight ballooned and dropped. Injuries piled up. Comebacks were announced, delayed, reshaped. The biggest win of his life began to look like a relic from another era, something that happened to a different man.
On Friday night, about 10 miles from the Garden where everything changed, Ruiz walks back into the lights. The Prudential Center in Newark hosts what he openly frames as a final charge at the summit, a 12‑round non-title fight against 6ft 7in Damian Knyba, his first outing since a majority draw with Jarrell Miller more than two years ago.
It is the opening chapter of a three-fight deal with Eddie Hearn, the promoter whose plans he wrecked in 2019 and whose backing he now needs to matter again.
There was a time when this seemed far less far-fetched. Even after losing his belts, Ruiz was only 30 and still one of the most naturally gifted offensive heavyweights alive – absurdly fast hands, sharp combinations, a knack for catching opponents between punches. The body never matched the speed; that was the point. From the amateurs in Mexicali to the title scene, people looked at the soft midsection and underestimated the fighter inside.
That edge dulled as the years drifted by. The talent never really left. The discipline did.
Piña coladas and a second chance
To change that, Ruiz went back to the man who first steered him to the top.
Manny Robles, the trainer who guided him through both Joshua fights, is back in his corner after a bitter split in the wake of the rematch. Ruiz tried other routes – Eddy Reynoso for his 2021 win over Chris Arreola, Alfredo Osuna for the 2022 victory over Luis Ortiz – and by the time he scraped past Miller in 2024, he admitted he was essentially training himself, “half-assing” it, “one foot in the water and one foot out”.
The reconciliation with Robles started far from any gym, over piña coladas in Tulum. On holiday with his girlfriend, Ruiz watched the division move on without him and, a little drunk and a lot reflective, swallowed his pride. He sent Robles a message on Instagram asking if he would come back.
Robles didn’t hesitate. Yes – but only if Ruiz truly committed. Listen. Focus. Give 120% of his time and dedication. No more shortcuts.
“I’m just happy that I reunited with Manny Robles,” Ruiz said in Newark on Wednesday. “Before with the other fights and the other opponents that I had, I wasn’t doing the right things that I was supposed to. [He] kind of woke me up, and that’s why we’re here now.”
This time, the proof isn’t in slogans but in hours. Robles says they have been in the gym virtually all year, not just for a standard eight- or 10-week camp. The work, he insists, started months ago.
“This did not start two months ago or three months ago,” Robles said. “It’s been the entire year and it’s been great to get to this point. I’m glad to say I got the old Andy back, and he’s in great shape mentally, physically, spiritually. He’s in a good place.”
The scale offered some support. At Thursday’s weigh-in, Ruiz came in at 254.3lb, his lightest since beating Kevin Johnson in 2018 and almost 30lb under the career-high 283.7lb he carried into the Joshua rematch. Knyba weighed 255.5lb. Six inches taller, barely a pound heavier.
A body rebuilt, a division broken apart
Ruiz’s long absences were not just about motivation. His right knee required surgery in 2021. A torn rotator cuff needed an operation in 2023. He broke his right hand in the Miller fight and pushed through all 12 rounds anyway, then tried to let it heal without going under the knife. It didn’t. Another surgery, another long layoff. By Friday, 762 days will have passed since he last climbed through the ropes.
During that time, he slowed down. He spent time with his five children. He worked on property developments with his father, a Mexican-born contractor who first dragged a hyperactive five-year-old Andy into a boxing gym and shuttled him back and forth across the border to Mexicali. He started going to church. With roughly $17m banked from the Joshua saga alone, he did not need to fight.
Eventually, the quiet started to grate.
He says he “became tired of being tired” and “bored of being bored”. The itch returned at the exact moment the heavyweight landscape blew wide open again.
Oleksandr Usyk’s points win over Tyson Fury in May 2024 delivered the first undisputed heavyweight champion since Lennox Lewis. Within two years, the belts were scattered again. At 39, Usyk vacated his remaining titles in June. Now Murat Gassiev holds the WBA belt, Agit Kabayel the WBC, Filip Hrgović the IBF and Daniel Dubois the WBO.
For a former champion with name recognition and one of the defining upsets of the last decade on his résumé, the timing is almost suspiciously good. Beat Knyba, and Ruiz is suddenly in the conversation. Win again, and a title shot stops sounding fanciful. Even a trilogy with Joshua, once a fantasy, lurks as a serious option after Joshua’s expected November showdown with Fury.
Ruiz has leaned into that ambition in his own way, even releasing a diss track that calls out a host of heavyweight rivals by name.
Back with the man he blindsided
There is a neat twist to his partnership with Hearn. In 2019, Ruiz was the one begging for a shot, sending Hearn a message when Miller failed a drugs test and blew up the original Joshua fight. Ruiz seized that chance and torched Hearn’s carefully arranged plans in New York.
Now he’s signed a three-fight deal with the same promoter, having fielded offers elsewhere before choosing the man whose empire he once shook.
Hearn is blunt about why.
“It’s a business decision,” he said of the deal with Matchroom. Ruiz still owns the hand speed, punching power and stubborn durability that turned him into Joshua’s worst nightmare. Add his heritage and his place in recent heavyweight folklore, and the ceiling remains high.
“If he gets this right and starts going through the division,” Hearn said, “he’s going to be one of the biggest stars in the sport.”
First, he has to get through a giant.
The giant slayer, again
Knyba, based in New Jersey and backed by a vocal Polish following, is 17-1 with 11 knockouts and an 86in reach. He is enormous even by modern heavyweight standards. His lone defeat came in January, a third-round stoppage by Agit Kabayel in a fight where he still showed flashes that he can live at elite level.
In Newark, Knyba called that loss a lesson, not a ceiling, and said he expects “the most hungry and best version of Andy Ruiz”.
Ruiz (35-2-1, 22 KOs) has heard the size questions his whole career. At 6ft 1in, he has spent years looking up at men like this.
“[Knyba]’s a giant,” Ruiz said. “That’s why they call me the giant slayer, because I’m always a small guy fighting these big, big guys. But for some reason it works for me.”
The matchup makes sense on more than one level. Ruiz is too far along, and the stakes are too high, to waste time on soft touches. He needs a test that tells him – and everyone else – whether there is still a run left in those fast hands.
Hearn put it without romance: if Ruiz truly intends to become world heavyweight champion again, these are the men he has to beat.
Seven years ago, Ruiz learned how quickly tomorrow can vanish in this business. At 36, lighter, repaired and finally willing to do the unglamorous work, he walks into Newark knowing there are only so many more nights like this left.
Now he has to decide whether that Joshua shock was a one-off miracle – or the start of a story he’s finally ready to finish.
