Andy Ruiz Jr once turned boxing upside down. Can he do it again at 36?

Seven years ago, Andy Ruiz Jr became the first fighter of Mexican descent to win the world heavyweight championship in one of the biggest upsets boxing has ever seen, stopping the undefeated Anthony Joshua inside seven rounds at Madison Square Garden.A replacement opponent summoned on five weeks’ notice who went off as an 11-1 underdog, Ruiz came off the canvas in the third to knock Joshua down four times before the referee finally waved it off. Hailed as the “Mexican Rocky”, he was lionized as a border-straddling hero in his hometown of Imperial, the dusty agricultural community framed by the mountain ranges and flat deserts of south-eastern California. He made the late-night rounds, took an audience with Mexico president Andrés Manuel López Obrador and signed a $10m guarantee when Joshua activated his rematch clause. The money, cars, fame and women arrived all at once.Barely six months later, Ruiz was an ex-champion who had taken his place alongside Buster Douglas, Leon Spinks and James J Braddock in heavyweight boxing’s one-and-done club. His 190-day reign ended with a listless points defeat to Joshua in the sand-blown Saudi Arabian city of Diriyah, after three months of partying and a self-abbreviated training camp that left him 15lb heavier than he had been for their first meeting. At a 3am press conference after the fight that ached with pathos, Ruiz admitted he had been overconfident and had failed to take the rematch seriously, the regret plain on his marked-up face.Ruiz, who turns 37 next week, has fought only three times in the more than six years since, a wilderness period marked by fluctuating weight, injuries and enough false starts to make the most famous win of his career feel like an artifact from another life.On Friday night at the Prudential Center in Newark, about 10 miles west of the Manhattan arena where his life changed forever, Ruiz will launch one final campaign for the heavyweight summit, testing the limits of even boxing’s generous capacity for second chances. He will face the 6ft 7in Damian Knyba in a 12-round non-title fight, his first appearance since a majority draw with Jarrell Miller more than two years ago and the first of a three-fight contract with Eddie Hearn’s promotional company.Andy Ruiz Jr throws out the ceremonial first pitch before the Padres’ game against the San Francisco Giants at Petco Park last month in San Diego. Photograph: Matt Thomas/San Diego Padres/Getty ImagesThere was a time when another run at the title was more plausible. Even after losing the WBA, IBF and WBO belts to Joshua, Ruiz was only 30 and remained one of the division’s most naturally gifted offensive fighters, blessed with unusually fast hands and an ability to throw blinding combinations that belied his doughy frame. It was the same contradiction that had followed him since childhood, when opponents routinely underestimated the chubby kid whose hand speed and ring intelligence were apparent in the amateur ranks long before the rest of the world took notice.Manny Robles, the 54-year-old trainer who guided Ruiz through both Joshua fights, is once again in his corner after their messy split amid the wreckage of the rematch. Ruiz had gone on to enlist Eddy Reynoso, the trainer best known for his partnership with Canelo Álvarez, before his 2021 comeback against Chris Arreola, then switched to Alfredo Osuna for his win over Luis Ortiz the following year. By the time he returned from another long absence to fight Miller in 2024, Ruiz said he was effectively training himself and “half-assing” with “one foot in the water and one foot out”.Their reconciliation began over piña coladas while Ruiz was vacationing with his girlfriend in Tulum. As he reflected on the heavyweight division moving on without him, Ruiz said he swallowed his pride and, a little intoxicated, messaged Robles on Instagram to ask if he would train him again. Robles replied almost immediately that he would, provided Ruiz was prepared to listen, focus and give him “120%” of his time and dedication.“I’m just happy that I reunited with Manny Robles,” Ruiz said Wednesday in Newark. “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.”Their reunion has become the most credible evidence that Ruiz’s comeback is different from the fits and starts that came before. Robles said they have spent virtually the entire year in the gym together rather than assembling for a conventional training 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.”Andy Ruiz Jr knocks down Anthony Joshua in the third round of their heavyweight title fight at New York’s Madison Square Garden on 1 June 2019. Photograph: Al Bello/Getty ImagesThere was at least some evidence for Robles’s optimism at Thursday’s weigh-in. Ruiz came in at a svelte 254.3lb, his lightest since a 2018 win over Kevin Johnson and 29.4lb below the career-high 283.7lb he weighed for the Joshua rematch. Knyba weighed 255.5lb, leaving barely a pound between fighters separated by six inches in height.There have been legitimate obstacles on Ruiz’s road back, including surgeries on his right knee in 2021 and on a torn rotator cuff in 2023. He then broke his right hand during the Miller fight but pressed on through the injury for all 12 rounds. He initially hoped it would heal without an operation before eventually undergoing surgery, another setback that contributed to the 762-day absence that ends on Friday.Ruiz took his recovery slowly, spent time with his five children and worked on property developments with his Mexican-born father, the contractor who introduced him to boxing aged five to tame a hyperactive streak and spent years ferrying him across the border to gyms in Mexicali. He started going to church. Having earned about $17m from the Joshua fights alone, there was no financial imperative. But eventually, as he puts it, he “became tired of being tired” and “bored of being bored”.The timing could hardly be better for a lapsed heavyweight contender attempting to re-enter the frame. It took a quarter-century for boxing to produce the first undisputed heavyweight champion since Lennox Lewis – when Oleksandr Usyk finally unified all four major titles by outpointing Tyson Fury in May 2024 – and barely two years for the division to splinter completely again. With the 39-year-old Usyk having vacated his remaining titles in June, the belts are now scattered among Murat Gassiev (the WBA champion), Agit Kabayel (WBC), Filip Hrgović (IBF) and Daniel Dubois (WBO), creating no shortage of potential pathways back to the top.For a former world champion with a recognizable name and one of the most famous victories of the past decade, a win on Friday could propel Ruiz right back into the championship mix. Even a lucrative rubber match with Joshua, once seemingly fanciful, could be in play after the Englishman’s anticipated November showdown with Fury. (Ruiz’s recently released diss track, which name-checks no fewer than a half-dozen of his heavyweight rivals, suggests he’s not wanting for ambition.)Andy Ruiz Jr weighed in at 254.3lb for Friday’s fight against Damian Knyba, his lightest fighting weight since 2018. Photograph: Matchroom BoxingThere is neat symmetry to Ruiz’s return. It was Ruiz himself who messaged Hearn back in 2019, pleading for the opportunity when Miller was removed from the Joshua fight after testing positive for performance-enhancing drugs. Now, after fielding offers elsewhere, Ruiz has aligned himself with the promoter whose carefully laid heavyweight plans he turned upside down that night in New York.Hearn makes no secret of the commercial calculus. “It’s a business decision,” he said of Ruiz’s deal with Matchroom. The promoter believes the hand speed, punching power and durability that made Ruiz such an improbable nightmare for Joshua remain intact, while his heritage and history give him a box-office ceiling few heavyweights today can match. “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.”Knyba (17-1, 11 KOs), an enormous fighter even by heavyweight standards who carries an 86in reach, represents the first examination. The New Jersey-based Pole is coming off the lone defeat on his professional ledger, a January stoppage loss to Germany’s Kabayel where he enjoyed promising stretches before the fight was stopped in the third round. At Wednesday’s final press conference, Knyba called the experience proof that he could operate at the elite level and said he expects to face “the most hungry and best version of Andy Ruiz”. A substantial Polish contingent is expected, recalling the rollicking crowds that once made two-weight world champion Tomasz Adamek a major draw in Newark.For Ruiz (35-2-1, 22 KOs), the size discrepancy is nothing new. At 6ft 1in, he has spent his entire career looking up at heavyweights with more conventional builds. “[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 also serves a practical purpose. There is little value now in easing Ruiz back in against an opponent who cannot tell him anything about what’s left. As Hearn put it bluntly: “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.”Ruiz learned seven years ago there are only so many tomorrows a fighter can waste before they run out. At 36 and finally ready to make them count, he’s about to find out how many he has left.