By Jim Dower: Former WBA heavyweight champion Nikolai Valuev (48-1, 34 KOs) will be trying to recapture his title when he goes up against his old nemesis John Ruiz (43-7, 29 KOs) late on this month on August 30th, at the Max Schmeling Halle, Prenzlauer Berg, in Berlin, Germany. Valuev, 34, previously defeated Ruiz in a close 12-round majority decision to take his title three years ago in Berlin. Now he’ll be attempting to repeat the act with another victory over the 36 year-old Ruiz, who himself is coming off two impressive victories over Otis Tisdale and 6’6″ journeyman Jameel McCline, and has looked sharp in both fights.
Indeed, Ruiz looks nothing like he used to last time they fought. No longer does Ruiz clinch constantly in his fights, something that he has taken a lot of head about from boxing fans and in the media. Ruiz has revamped his entire offense, turning into more of a counter puncher, and has adapted well to his new style of fighting. He’s so confident with his new style that he’s said that he’ll make a donation to charity if he ends up holding more than Valuev in the fight. Ruiz doesn’t want to go back to the old style, which seemed to detract from many of his fine performances.
Ruiz, a two-time WBA heavyweight champion, had notable fights against Evander Holyfield, whom he defeated to initially win the WBA title in 2001, Roy Jones Jr., Andrew Golota, and Hasim Rahman. Ruiz was defeated by a pumped up looking Jones by a 12-round unanimous decision in March 2003. However, Ruiz would win it back after Jones gave up the title, defeating Rahman in December 2003. Ruiz would then hold onto the title until being defeated in a controversial manner by Valuev in 2005, despite Ruiz landing the better shots in the fight. The fight was close, and difficult to score as Valuev landed more often, but his shots were weaker, and weren’t thrown with as good form as Ruiz.
Following the defeat, Ruiz went back to the drawing board, changing his offensive style from top to bottom and taking on Ruslan Chagaev 11 months later in November 2006, losing a 12-round split decision. Ruiz fought well, but didn’t quite have enough power to compete with the hard-punching Chagaev in the trenches.
Ruiz rarely clinched during the fight, which made it an entertaining fight to watch, but it also seemed to tire him out in the later rounds of the fight. As it was, the fight was too close to call and looked to be a draw. After destroying Tisdale in two rounds in October 2007, Ruiz fought perhaps the finest bout of his career when he gave a boxing lesson to McCline, beating him by a 12-round lopsided decision in March. Ruiz negated McCline’s height advantage, and landed cleanly with right hands all night long.
Valuev, 34, is seeking to regain his title after losing it by a 12-round split decision to Chagaev in April 2007. He’s won twice since that time, defeating Jean Francois Bergeron and Serguei Lyakhovich. Valuev has worked hard on his stamina problem, which affected him in the later rounds of his fight with Chagaev. Though he looked somewhat tired in the latter part of his fight with Lyakhovich, he was still throwing a lot of punches and looked much better than he did in his off performance against Chagaev.