Andy Ruiz Jr. took the same punch Francis Ngannou was out cold for two minutes from when he faced Anthony Joshua.
Boxing’s first Mexican heavyweight champion shocked Joshua in New York during the summer of 2019. He dropped Joshua more than once on his way to shocking the world.
However, it could have been so different for Ruiz to get there. If he hadn’t had the years of top boxing training, sparring, and fight experience he had, Ruiz probably would have ended up like Ngannou.
Joshua planted Ngannou in the second round, ending the fight there and then. The referee could have counted more than ten times, but Ngannou was still flat out on the canvas.
Andy Ruiz Jr took Anthony Joshua’s best
To his credit, Ruiz ate that shot like a cheeseburger and threw his own punch back, further evidence of why boxers are considered tougher than MMA fighters.
Former world champion turned DAZN analyst Sergio Mora said, “A boxer’s chin is built differently!”
Several instances have made the rounds after Joshua took Ngannou out, as Tyson Fury should have in October. Instead, Fury hit the canvas himself as he didn’t take the former UFC champion seriously.
Ex-World Boxing News writer Dan Rafael said of the KO: “Ngannou was out cold. That made Fury look really, really bad.”
After witnessing ringside, Fury commented on the fight: “I’m sure Oleksandr Usyk will have something to say about that. I had a bad performance against Ngannou.
“AJ did absolutely fantastic and lit him up with a right hand. It will be a different game if he fights me after I beat Usyk twice.”
Rematch
We all know what happened to Ruiz in the rematch. However, Joshua can take little credit for that, as Ruiz mimicked Fury and hardly trained. Since the victory, Ruiz has become more interested in living a certain lifestyle, with his career taking a backseat only when he needs a paycheck boost.
Before he faced Joshua for the second, though six months after his world title triumph, Ruiz accused the Briton of quitting.
“A little bit. Maybe I feel he quit because of the way that it was won.
“I think he was still out of it. But I didn’t think he knew where he was at that moment. I think that he [Joshua] quit.”
Asked if he’d have been hurt from the punches that stopped AJ, Ruiz concluded:” It depends on how hurt I was. I’m not going to quit. If I fall, I fall.”
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