By Manuel Perez: If IBF/WBO heavyweight champion Wladimir Klitschko (52-3, 46 KO’s) wants to get a good replacement heavyweight to take injured David Haye’s place for the June 20th date at the Veltin’s Arena, Klitschko need look no further than picking two-time World Boxing Association heavyweight champion John Ruiz (43-8-1, 29 KOs) to take the fight.
Ruiz, 37, is talented warrior, ranked #3 in the WBA heavyweight rankings, and best of all, is willing to step in and take the fight with Klitschko. I take that back. Ruiz will take the fight once he finds out the ruling that the WBA makes on his petition to fight WBA title holder Nikolay Valuev next for his title.
If the WBA doesn’t call for the fight to happen, then Ruiz will step in and take the fight. I think this is the fight that Wladimir should be going after instead of Haye, or Ruslan Chagaev, the fighter that Klitschko has been mentioned as being interested in using as the substitute for Haye.
I see Ruiz being too clever for Wladimir and giving him huge problems. Ruiz is excellent at picking off the jab, and would have no trouble blocking Wladimir’s jabs and coming under them to land his sneaky right hands to the head. Ruiz is a much better inside fighter than Wladimir and would stay glued to him for 12 rounds, beating Wladimir up on the inside.
All of Klitschko’s offensive tools are centered around him being able to fight on the outside using his jab, left hook and right hand. These weapons would immediately be nullified by Ruiz, who would smother Wladimir and keep him from getting his shots off, forcing him to fight a grueling inside battle that he has no skills at. Without an uppercut in his arsenal, Wladimir would be battered by Ruiz on the inside and beaten up.
Ruiz has been beaten three times in the past four years by controversial decisions to Valuev and Chagaev. I’ve personally seen each of these fights and I think Ruiz won all of them by a narrow decision. Ruiz hasn’t been cleanly beaten since losing by a 12-round decision to Roy Jones Jr. six years ago in 2003, and that fight hardly counts because Ruiz was going through a lot of stuff in his life at the time of the fight.
Ruiz dominated the first round of the fight but then seemed to lose concentration for the remainder of the bout and not fight hard. In terms of talent, I think Ruiz could have easily have won that fight had he put his mind into the bout, but he just wasn’t there on that night mentally because of some stuff weighing him down.
Ruiz was beaten by another questionable decision in 2000 by Evander Holyfield, losing by a 12-round decision. That’s another fight I see Ruiz as having won. I’m not sure which fight then judges were watching on that night but it couldn’t have been the Ruiz-Holyfield fight because I had Ruiz winning the bout nine rounds to three. It wasn’t a close fight, believe me.
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