Heavyweights are suddenly fun once again
JUST when things were starting to make sense in boxing and the heavyweight division was shaping up nicely, a fat guy with blazingly quick hands wiped away most of the preconceived notions of where it would all eventually lead.
Andy Ruiz Jr. didn’t just upend heavyweight boxing. He threw it a body punch that left the division gasping for air.
Whether that is good news or bad for boxing depends on where you live and how it plays out. If nothing else, though, Ruiz scored one for the ordinary guy when he shocked Anthony Joshua and the rest of boxing with the fight of his life Saturday night at Madison Square Garden.
He not only beat the man most considered the best heavyweight in the world, but he gave him a beating in the process. When it finally ended after a flurry of punches in the seventh round that had Joshua unable — or simply unwilling — to go on, there was a new world order among the big men in boxing.
Now the task is sorting it all out again.
On one side of the pond is a new heavyweight champion, with belts big enough to fit his portly frame. Ruiz is an American from the California border town of Imperial who claims Mexican heritage, and as the first Mexican heavyweight champion he can pretty much write his own ticket to fame and fortune.
Down in Alabama is Deontay Wilder, who holds one of the big belts himself. Wilder is coming off a first-round knockout of Dominic Breazeale last month and has not been shy about setting his own schedule no matter what competing promoters might want him to do.
There’s Joshua, of course, who hadn’t lost before being upset by Ruiz and is a national hero of sorts in England. RUIZ,15