Andy Ruiz Jr Returns: Testing Boxing's Faith in Second Chances
Seven years on from Joshua shock, Andy Ruiz Jr is back to test boxing’s faith in second chances.
The first time Andy Ruiz Jr walked into heavyweight history, he came through a side door.
Five weeks’ notice. An 11-1 underdog. A late replacement summoned to save a show at Madison Square Garden, expected to collect a cheque and a loss from the undefeated Anthony Joshua.
Instead, the chubby kid from Imperial, California, climbed off the canvas in the third round and tore the heavyweight order to pieces.
Four knockdowns later, the referee waved it off and the sport had a new world champion – the first of Mexican descent – and an instant folk tale. The “Mexican Rocky” headline wrote itself. So did the next chapter of his life: presidential visits, late-night talk shows, luxury cars, a $10m rematch guarantee, and the sudden, dizzying rush of money, fame and temptation.
It didn’t last.
From Mexican Rocky to cautionary tale
Barely six months after that unforgettable night in New York, Ruiz handed the belts back in the sand and wind of Diriyah, Saudi Arabia. This time there were no miracles, no momentum shifts, no chaos.
Just a flat, heavy ex-champion trudging after a disciplined Joshua and losing widely on points.
The numbers told their own story. Ruiz came in 15lb heavier than for the first fight. The training camp had been short, the parties long. At a 3am press conference, his face marked up and his voice heavy with regret, he admitted what everyone had seen: he hadn’t taken the rematch seriously. Overconfidence. Complacency. The classic one-and-done heavyweight parable, filed alongside Buster Douglas, Leon Spinks and James J Braddock.
He had reigned for 190 days. It felt shorter.
What followed looked like exile. Ruiz, who turns 37 next week, has boxed only three times in more than six years. Injuries, layoffs, fluctuating weight, new trainers, new plans, more delays. The greatest night of his career began to feel like something that had happened to a different man.
On Friday in Newark, he tries to prove that man is still in there.
One last climb
The Prudential Center sits about 10 miles west of Madison Square Garden, where his life detonated in 2019. It’s a fitting distance: close enough to stir the memories, far enough to underline how far he has drifted.
There, Ruiz will face 6ft 7in Damian Knyba in a 12-round non-title fight, his first outing since a majority draw with Jarrell Miller more than two years ago. It’s the opener of a three-fight deal with Eddie Hearn’s Matchroom, the same promoter whose carefully drawn heavyweight plans Ruiz shredded on that New York night.
This is being billed, quite clearly, as his final push toward the summit. Boxing is generous with second chances, especially for heavyweights with name value and history. But even this sport eventually asks for proof.
There was a time when another title run felt almost inevitable. Ruiz was only 30 when he lost the WBA, IBF and WBO belts. His hand speed remained freakish for a man of his build. His combinations still came in blurs, the same contradiction that had fooled opponents since his amateur days: underestimate the round-faced kid at your peril.
The talent never really left. The discipline did.
Back with the coach who knew him best
Now, the most important piece of his comeback is back in place. Manny Robles, the trainer who guided him through both Joshua fights, is again in his corner after a messy split in the aftermath of the rematch.
In between, Ruiz bounced through notable names. He joined Eddy Reynoso’s stable for his 2021 return against Chris Arreola, then moved to Alfredo Osuna for his win over Luis Ortiz in 2022. By the time he shared a ring with Miller in 2024, he admitted he was essentially training himself, “half-assing” it, as he put it, with “one foot in the water and one foot out”.
The reset came in an unlikely setting. On holiday in Tulum with his girlfriend, piña colada in hand, Ruiz looked at a heavyweight division moving on without him and decided to swallow his pride. Slightly drunk, he messaged Robles on Instagram, asking if the coach would take him back.
Robles replied almost immediately. Yes – but only if Ruiz committed fully. Listen. Focus. “120%” of his time and dedication.
“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.”
The reunion isn’t just sentimental. It’s the clearest sign yet that this comeback has a different shape. Robles says they’ve been in the gym virtually all year, not simply for an eight- or 10-week camp.
“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.”
On Thursday’s scales, there was visual evidence. Ruiz weighed 254.3lb, his lightest since a 2018 win over Kevin Johnson and nearly 30lb down from the career-high 283.7lb he carried into the Joshua rematch. Knyba came in at 255.5lb. Just over a pound between them, six inches in height apart.
For once, the numbers flatter Ruiz.
Scars, surgeries and a different kind of time
His disappearance from the scene hasn’t been just about motivation. The body has taken its toll.
He underwent surgery on his right knee in 2021. A torn rotator cuff required an operation in 2023. During the Miller fight, he broke his right hand but fought through the pain for all 12 rounds. He hoped rest would be enough. It wasn’t. Surgery followed, and with it another long spell out of the ring.
By the time he walks to the ring in Newark, 762 days will have passed since he last fought.
He filled some of that time with life, not boxing. He slowed down. Spent time with his five children. Threw himself into property developments with his father, a Mexican-born contractor who had first taken a hyperactive five-year-old Andy to the gym and driven him across the border to Mexicali for training sessions.
He started going to church. Having earned around $17m from the Joshua fights alone, he didn’t need to fight again to pay bills. The urgency was gone.
Then something else set in. He grew, as he describes it, “tired of being tired” and “bored of being bored”.
The itch returned.
A fractured division, a wide-open door
He could hardly have picked a better moment to come back.
In May 2024, Oleksandr Usyk outpointed Tyson Fury and became the first undisputed heavyweight champion since Lennox Lewis. For a brief window, the division had a single king again.
By June, that order had already begun to dissolve. Usyk, now 39, vacated his remaining belts. The titles scattered: Murat Gassiev holds the WBA strap, Agit Kabayel the WBC, Filip Hrgović the IBF, Daniel Dubois the WBO.
The landscape looks chaotic, but for an ex-champion with name recognition, it’s opportunity. Win in Newark and Ruiz is suddenly back in the conversation. With his résumé and profile, he doesn’t need a long queue of eliminators to reach a title shot.
Even a third fight with Joshua, once filed under fantasy, no longer feels impossible. The Englishman is expected to face Fury in November. If he comes through, the history with Ruiz sells itself. Ruiz has already leaned into the idea, dropping a diss track that calls out a string of heavyweight rivals by name. Subtlety has never been his route to a payday.
Full circle with Eddie Hearn
There’s a neat symmetry to his latest deal.
Back in 2019, when Jarrell Miller was pulled from the Joshua fight after testing positive for performance-enhancing drugs, it was Ruiz who messaged Hearn, lobbying for the shot. He got it. He wrecked the plan.
Now, after weighing up offers from elsewhere, he has signed a three-fight contract with the same promoter. The calculation on Hearn’s side is blunt.
“It’s a business decision,” he said of the agreement with Matchroom.
He looks at Ruiz and still sees the same dangerous mix: fast hands, real power, proven durability, and a heritage and backstory that resonate with fans on both sides of the US-Mexico border. That, Hearn believes, gives Ruiz a box-office ceiling that few current heavyweights can touch.
“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 past a very big man.
The giant and the “giant slayer”
Damian Knyba is 17-1 with 11 knockouts, an enormous heavyweight even by modern standards, boasting an 86in reach and a frame built to lean, maul and punch from long range. He fights out of New Jersey and is coming off the lone defeat of his professional career, a January stoppage loss to Agit Kabayel in Germany.
That night, he had moments of promise before the referee halted it in the third round. He has framed the loss not as exposure, but as evidence that he can operate at the sport’s top level.
At Wednesday’s final press conference, Knyba said he expects “the most hungry and best version of Andy Ruiz”. A large Polish contingent is expected in the arena, echoing the nights when Tomasz Adamek turned Newark into a noisy outpost of Wroclaw.
For Ruiz, size disadvantages are nothing new. At 6ft 1in, he has spent his career staring up at heavyweights with more traditional physiques.
“[Knyba]’s a giant,” he 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 match-up is also a statement of intent. There is little sense in easing Ruiz back against an opponent who cannot answer the central question: what’s left?
Hearn put it plainly: “If you’ve got the ambition to really do what you say you want to do, which is to go and win the world heavyweight title again, you have to be beating guys like this.”
Seven years ago, Ruiz found out how quickly a single night can change everything. He also learned how fast those nights can disappear if you waste the days around them.
At 36, leaner, reunited with the trainer who knew how to reach him, and with a fractured division in front of him, he walks into Newark with one truth hanging over him.
There are not many tomorrows left. How many he can still turn into something will be decided under the lights.
