By Jim Dower: Two time heavyweight champion John Ruiz (44-9-1, 30 KOs) has decided to hang up his boxing gloves and retire after an 18-year pro career in the sport, which saw the 38-year-old Ruiz capture the WBA heavyweight title twice and rack up wins over the likes of Kirk Johnson, Evander Holyfield, Hasim Rahman, Andrew Golota, Fres Oquendo, Tony Tucker, and Jameel McCline. However, Ruiz’s career ended on a sad note, as he was dominated and stopped by World Boxing Association heavyweight champion David Haye in a 9th round TKO loss on April 3rd in Manchester, England.

At the time of his retirement, Ruiz was ranked #1 by the WBA, and within position to get another title shot in the near future if he could keep winning.

Ruiz was a fighter that got the most out of his talent. At 6’2”, Ruiz wasn’t blessed with a lot of natural size and physical skills like some fighters, but he was able to succeed by developing a style of fighting that made him hard to beat. Ruiz liked to land a shot and then clinch his opponents before they were able to respond. In using this style, Ruiz was able to shut down the offenses of a number of good fighters.

However, the style of fighting wasn’t always crowd pleasing due to the lack of action that it brought about. Towards the end of his career, Ruiz changed his style of fighting and became more offensively inclined. Unfortunately, Ruiz only had mixed results with his more offensive style of fighting and might have been better off sticking with what made him successful in the first place.

The problem for Ruiz is that he didn’t have crushing power or the blazing hand speed that would make him successful as an offensive fighter. As such, he suffered losses to Ruslan Chagaev, Nikolay Valuev and Haye in the last four years of his career. It would have been interesting to see how Ruiz would have done against those fighters using his punch and clinch technique. Ruiz would have likely been able to shut down their offense with his smothering style of fighting.

Ruiz plans on moving from his current home in Las Vegas, Nevada back to his old home city of Boston, where he plans on starting a boxing gym in the inner city. Ruiz says he could become a trainer in the future.