By Scott Gilfoid: With his new offensive style, former heavyweight champion John Ruiz (43-7, 29 KOs) hopes to recapture his WBA heavyweight championship on August 30th against 300 lb, seven-foot giant Nikolai Valuev (48-1, 34 KOs) at the Max Schmeling Halle, Prenzlauer Berg, in Berlin, Germany. The two fighters will be battling it out for the vacant WBA title, which was made possible after WBA champion Ruslan Chagaev sustained an injury, preventing him from defending his title against mandatory challenger Valuev. This was the second cancellation for a title defense for Chagaev, and instead of being stripped of his title, the WBA allowed Valuev and Ruiz to fight it out for the vacant title, with the winner to fight to the champion in recess Chagaev, if he’s able to make it into the ring without being ill or injured yet again.

Ruiz, 36, has been fighting rather well of late, having won his last two fights and changed his style of fighting altogether. Ruiz’s old style of fighting, which consisted of punching and grabbing, is no longer part of his offensive game. Instead, he’s gone back to his old style of fighting early in his career when he was more noted for slugging it out with his opponents. However, it will be interesting to see if Ruiz has the size to use his new style of fighting against the bear-like size of Valuev, who even though he’s not a particularly hard puncher, he has a way of clubbing his opponents into submission with his big mauling swings.

Ruiz, if hopes to be successful this time out, he’s going to have to stay in close enough to land his bigger shots. Last time out in December 2005, a fight in which Ruiz lost by a 12-round majority decision, he made the mistake of trying to stay on the outside too much, and gave away a lot of the rounds by doing that. Valuev’s long jab is a problem for Ruiz should he try and stay on the outside, which is why he’s going to have to take some risks by going directly at Valuev and try to take him out with some big shots.

So far, Valuev has showed a good chin and has only been stunned on a few occasions in his boxing career. However, Valuev has faced mostly limited competition, other than Ruiz, and a few other decent fighters, and hasn’t been truly tested for a full 12-round fight. If Ruiz can stick to his new offensive oriented game plan, he may get lucky and hurt Valuev with a big shot. And like in the case of Monte Barrett taking out Tye Fields, once Ruiz has Valuev hurt, he may have an excellent chance of hitting the big slow giant with a number of big shots to finish him off.

Valuev, however, has good power and he just continues to throw heavy shots one after another, round after round without stop. If Ruiz is right in front of him, Valuev’s job will be made much easier, because he won’t need to move his huge body around the ring and tire himself out the way he did against Chagaev.