Andy Ruiz Jr left the ring in Newark bruised, beaten on the cards, but defiantly unbowed.
Seven years after shaking the sport to its core by flattening Anthony Joshua and ripping away his world titles, the former unified heavyweight champion looked a long way from that thunderous night in New York. At the Prudential Center, under the same East Coast lights, the magic never really came.
Damian Knyba, tall, disciplined and unfazed by the name in front of him, walked away with the biggest win of his career. The Polish heavyweight claimed a unanimous decision, with scores of 117-110, 114-113 and 114-113, to move his record to 18 wins and one defeat. He did it by sticking to a simple, effective plan and by surviving the few moments when Ruiz tried to stir the old chaos.
The defining flash came in the seventh. Ruiz, already looking heavy-legged and short of timing, was dropped and scrambled desperately back to his feet. The bell rescued him, not the reflexes that once stunned Joshua at Madison Square Garden. He beat the count, but he never really beat the clock on his own inactivity.
This was only Ruiz’s fourth outing since losing the rematch to Joshua in December 2019. The years have been filled with injuries, false starts and long silences. On Saturday night, the rust showed.
He struggled to close the distance. Every time he tried to step in and let his fast hands go, Knyba smothered him, tying him up, leaning on him, draining what remained of the old urgency. The fight became a pattern: Ruiz trying to work his way inside, Knyba spoiling, resetting, banking rounds.
Ruiz saw it differently.
"I don't know, I think it was just him holding," he said afterwards, frustration leaking through as he assessed the defeat in his first bout since a draw with Jarrell Miller in August 2024. "Every time I tried to come in, he'd hold me really tight, and I just couldn't let my combinations go. He played a good game plan, but I'd love to run it back and do things a lot different."
The Mexican-American, now 36 and newly signed with British promoter Eddie Hearn, insisted the performance owed more to inactivity than to decline.
"It was just a long layoff, and it was a great opponent," he argued. "I didn't want to take an easy fight, so that's why I took Damian. He's a big guy. But we've got to take risks. I've still got it in me, man. I've just got to stay active and I want to fight again."
That last line matters. Ruiz is no longer the division’s disruptor; he is the former champion trying to prove that the Joshua shock was not his one perfect night. The scorecards in New Jersey say one thing. His belief, and his demand for a rematch with Knyba, say another.
The question now is simple: in a heavyweight era moving quickly around him, how many more chances will he get to prove that he really does still have it in him?
