By Chris Williams: Former two-time heavyweight champion John Ruiz (43-7-1, 29 KOs) and former World Boxing Association champion Nikolay Valuev (48-1, 34 KOs) go at for the vacant WBA heavyweight belt this Saturday night in a 12-round title bout at the Max Schmeling Halle, Prenzlauer Berg, in Berlin, Germany. The winner, unfortunately, has to fight the champion in recess Ruslan Chagaev who twice previously has had to postpone title bouts against Valuev, once for an illness and another title due to a torn Achilles tendon of Chagaev’s left ankle. Like the often injury-plagued Vitali Klitschko, it will be interesting to see if Chagaev makes into a title bout against the winner of Ruiz-Valuev without getting injured or sick once again.

There’s still bad blood between Ruiz and Valuev due to an earlier controversial bout between them in December 2005, in which Valuev won a 12-round majority decision in front of his home audience in Germany. By many people’s opinions that saw the fight, Ruiz had done enough due to his harder punches to win the fight and get the decision. However, it wasn’t to be for Ruiz, and neither was a rematch forthcoming, which one would assume would happen in the case of a close fight between to combatants. Instead, Valuev moved on with his slim mandate, and would subsequently defend his WBA heavyweight title three times before running into his own bad luck with another controversial decision, this time him getting the business with a 12-round majority decision loss to Ruslan Chagaev in April 2007.

Perhaps this is how things go in Germany, but whatever the case, Valuev wasn’t given a chance for an immediate rematch, either. This left both Valuev and Ruiz having to rebuild their careers, with Valuev doing slightly the better job, defeating previously undefeated Canadian heavyweight Jean Francois Bergeron by a 12-round unanimous decision in September 2007, and then topping that victory with an impressive 12-round unanimous decision over former World Boxing Organization heavyweight champion Serguei Lyakhovich in February 2008.

Valuev, 35, did well in working on his problems with lack of conditioning, an issue which plagued him in his fight with Chagaev. Ruiz, for his part, turned around and immediately lost to Chagaev by a 12-round split decision in November 2006, a fight that he appeared to have won. The fight, like the earlier loss to Valuev, was fought in Germany where Chagaev now fights. Ruiz then rebounded from the two defeats with a couple of impressive wins over Otis Tisdale and Jameel McCline, the latter bout being for the WBC Heavyweight Title Eliminator.

For Ruiz, if successful, this will be his third heavyweight title belt in his long 16-year career for him, and one that will bring him full circle to where he was at the beginning. At the start of his career, back in 1992, Ruiz was an exciting slugger, noted for his impressive knockouts in the early rounds.

However, after tasting defeat at the hands of David Tua in a 1st round KO in 1996, Ruiz revamped his offense and became more of a clincher and wrestling-type fighter, something that he has taken a lot of heat from by many boxing fans over the years. Now, however, Ruiz has gone back to his slugging style of fighting that he held earlier in his career and it has paid off for him with two impressive back to back victories over Tisdale and McCline.

It remains to be seen, though, whether Ruiz can do the same thing against the 7-foot 320 pound Valuev that he did against his two prior opponents. Indeed, Ruiz’s new slugging style could very end up getting him knocked out if things don’t go as he expects against the huge Valuev.