Joshua-Ruiz I is the TSS 2019 Upset of the Year

Joshua-Ruiz I is the TSS 2019 Upset of the Year

What constitutes an upset? A good definition would be for something to happen that hardly anyone had any reasonable right to expect to happen.

So defined, it would have to be a shocking upset for any boxing match that took place in 2019 other than the first pairing of Anthony Joshua and Andy Ruiz Jr. to be named The Sweet Science’s Upset of the Year. And as much as fight fans like to bear witness to the occasional odds-reversal, chalk prevails in this instance. Joshua-Ruiz I is the slam-dunk, no-doubt-about-it sure thing that Joshua’s American debut was supposed to be, but wasn’t.

Such outcomes are the reason why actual boxing is always better than even pretty good fight movies where scripted victories by a supposed no-hoper (think Rocky Balboa) have some taint of phoniness.

The outcome of that June 1 title bout in Madison Square Garden – Ruiz, a blubbery 268 pounds and a 15-1 longshot in the Vegas sports books, flooring the magnificently sculpted WBA/WBO/IBF champion Joshua four times in winning by seventh-round technical knockout – slid comfortably behind only 42-1 designated victim Buster Douglas’ 1990 starching of Mike Tyson as the most outlandish result of any heavyweight title bout.

The rematch, in which an even-fatter Ruiz (283.7 pounds) was handily out-boxed by Joshua in losing by wide unanimous decision Dec. 7 in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, of all places, might or might not have confirmed any lingering suspicions that the original was a fluke, but nothing can erase the memory of the very rotund Ruiz leaping in exultation, his arms raised above his head.

“I wanted to prove all the doubters wrong, all the doubters thinking I was going to lose,” Ruiz, a native of Imperial, Calif., and the son of a Mexican immigrant father, said of fulfilling his dream of becoming the first heavyweight champ of Mexican descent.

Ruiz, whose well-cushioned physique belied his 32-1 record, with 21 KOs, got his shot at the big prize when another XXXL-sized opponent for Joshua, Jarrell “Big Baby” Miller, taller than Ruiz but 300-pounds-plus for all three of his 2018 bouts, tested positive for performance-enhancing drugs and lost the slot. Although Matchroom Sports’ Eddie Hearn considered other replacement candidates, AJ had trained to fight a fat guy and, well, Ruiz was the closest thing available to a Big Baby prototype. Not only that, but Ruiz all but begged to get the call as the pinch-hitter for Miller.

In an Instagram he sent to Hearn, Ruiz vowed that he would “fight harder than any of the names you’ve mentioned. I will give you a better fight, and I will beat Anthony Joshua.”

Ruiz got the call and, although his body has always been in various stages of lumpiness, he was coming off a fifth-round stoppage of fringe contender Alexander Dimitrenko on April 20 and was, by his relaxed standards, already in decent shape. Before his go at Joshua, he prophetically warned Joshua, the pugilistic pride of the United Kingdom, “Don’t underestimate this little fat boy.”

It was an admonition AJ, perhaps anticipating a U.S. coronation of sorts before a sellout crowd of 20,201 that largely consisted of his rabid British supporters, should have taken more seriously. Early on it seemed that the fight would play out as expected when Joshua dropped Ruiz in the third round, but the challenger arose and scored two knockdowns of his own in the same round, making for immediate revisions to the prewritten script. Four rounds later Ruiz put the finishing touches on the miracle he was fashioning when he twice more sent a woozy Joshua to the canvas, prompting referee Michael Griffin to step in after an elapsed time of 1 minute, 29 seconds.

At the post-fight press conference, Ruiz said “now that I have the time, I want to get in shape and look like a Mexican Anthony … My life is going to change. I don’t have to show (the doubters) no more.”

It was a promise that Ruiz couldn’t keep in the do-over, and it remains to be seen if he can do so moving forward. But he indeed made magic one early summer night in New York, when he demonstrated that anything is possible when two men step inside the ropes for a test of will and skill.

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