By Tim Royner: Roy Jones Jr. is recommending strongly that former heavyweight champion Anthony Joshua should forget all about fighting an immediate rematch with Andy Ruiz Jr. in his next fight, because he feels he needs take some tune-ups first. Jones says Joshua (22-1, 21 KOs) will get out-boxed by Ruiz (33-1, 22 KOs) if he faces him next, because he lacks the skills to beat him.
Roy Jones Jr. knew Joshua was going to lose to Ruiz
Jones says he predicted that Joshua would lose to Ruiz before they fought earlier this month on June 1 at Madison Square Garden in New York. Roy thought AJ was overlooking Ruiz, because of his loss to Joseph Parker in 2016. What Joshua failed to understand is Ruiz Jr. should have never lost the fight to Parker, because it was a controversial decision.
“I expected Andy Ruiz to beat Joseph Parker when he was in New Zealand,” said Jones to Fighthub. “For him to lose to Parker by a split decision in New Zealand he may not have lost that fight. He hasn’t lost confidence. He didn’t feel like he really lost the fight. You go to another guy’s country, and you get a split decision loss. You did not lose the fight. Of course, the home team is going to get it. What do you expect? Joshua looked at it like, ‘I beat Parker, and Parker beat Ruiz. This is a tune-up. I should probably out-box him,” said Jones.
Ruiz Jr. arguably should have been undefeated going into the fight with Joshua, because the loss to Parker was quite controversial in 2016. Although Parker feels he deserved the victory over Ruiz, the boxing world sees it differently. They saw Ruiz dominate Parker in front of his own fans in New Zealand. Joshua obviously figured that if Parker could beat Ruiz, then it would be no problem for him to do it as well. It was a mistake on Joshua’s part to overlook Ruiz, and now he’s got to try and come back from the loss.
Ruiz is the best combination puncher in the heavyweight division says Jones
“It’s not so easy, because Ruiz isn’t that type of fighter,” said Jones. “Ruiz is the best combination puncher in the division. If I was in my prime, Ruiz would be the last one that I would want to fight, because he throws combinations, and he has fast hands for a big guy. He’s bigger than they are, and he’s thick and strong. I knew he was going to beat Joshua. I didn’t think he was going to beat Joshua like that. Me and my son predicted he might beat Joshua, because he’d take him lightly because of how he looks,” said Jones.
Ruiz was 100 percent prepared for his fight with Joshua, and he took advantage of the British heavyweight’s inability to fight going backwards. Joshua hadn’t fought anyone before that put the kind of pressure on him that Ruiz did, which helps explain why he lost. The combination punching that Ruiz did really sunk Joshua’s ship, given that he couldn’t defend against his five to six punch combinations that he was throwing in round three and seven. Those are the rounds where Ruiz stepped up the pace of the fight, and Joshua wilted badly.
Joshua quit says Jones
“Andy Ruiz can box. He’s not the best fighter, but he can box. I thought he quit,” Jones said about Joshua. “Amir Khan in the Crawford fight, to me, that’s quitting. I like Amir Khan, but to me, I thought he quit.”
It was definitely a quit job by Joshua in round seven, but he was too hurt to continue. Ruiz had knocked Joshua down twice in the seventh, and he was physically and mentally done. It’s a good thing that Joshua didn’t resume fighting after the second knockdown in the seventh, because he might have wound up being stretchered out of the arena at Madison Square Garden. Ruiz was hitting Joshua at will with shots, and he couldn’t defend himself properly.
Joshua got out-boxed says Jones
“No,” said Jones Jr. when asked if Joshua should fight Ruiz in an immediate rematch. “He was really kind of out-boxed. He wasn’t just knocked down. He was out-boxed. Joshua has got to come back and hone his boxing skills. Once he hones his boxing skills, then he can go take the rematch. Don’t do it right away, because you haven’t fixed the problems. You have to fix the problem if you want to have a different result,” said Jones.
Joshua got out-punched more than he got out-boxed by Ruiz Jr., because there weren’t a lot of jabs thrown by the challenger. For the most part, Ruiz did damage to Joshua when he could attack him with powerful combinations, which led to his early knockout loss in the seventh. It wasn’t a case of Joshua being out-boxed by Ruiz. It was more of a situation where Ruiz won by smashing Joshua with his speedy combinations to the point where he quit in the seventh.
“He got out-boxed. He still got out-boxed,” said Jones. “You’ve got to fix that first, then you’ve got to go back for the rematch. If you’re not going to fix that, then why are you doing the rematch? The same thing is going to happen again. All he’s got to do is set you up for that one shot. He feels like he can get you. He’s got the confidence. You knocked him down, but he got back up and knocked you down. What he’s [Joshua] got to do is regroup, tie some things up, and come back.”
Joshua not listening to advice from experts
It would be a pity if Joshua suffers a second loss to Ruiz Jr. in the rematch in November or December, but he would only have himself to blame for the defeat. It’s not as if Joshua hasn’t been warned not to take the rematch. Roy Jones Jr. is telling Joshua to stay away from Ruiz, and obviously he’s not going to follow his directions. Lennox Lewis and George Foreman have also advised Joshua not to fight Ruiz in an immediate rematch, but he thinks he knows better than them obviously.
Jones did a lot more in his own pro career than Joshua has in his short three-year reign as a heavyweight world champion. There’s no comparison. During his best years, Jones was a far better fighter than Joshua has shown. If Joshua is unwilling to listen to an experienced fighter like Jones, then whatever bad happens to him in the rematch with Ruiz will be his own fault.
Jones says he would’t let Joshua take rematch with Ruiz
“If I had him, I’d say, ‘No, we’re going to do one tune-up first. We’re going to find someone you’ve got to box to beat. We’re not going to let you go knock him out,'” said Jones. “‘You’re going to box him first, and then you’re going to take him out if you can take him out. Our goal is to box to hone his boxing skills. Then we’re going to go after Ruiz. We’re not going to go after Ruiz until we fix our boxing skills problem. It don’t make sense,'” said Jones about Joshua.
It’s too bad there isn’t someone with enough persuasive ability from Team Joshua to talk him out of fighting Ruiz right away. However, if there was someone in Joshua’s team, it’s likely that he would overrule them, and tell them that he wants the rematch anyway. Joshua is so stubbornly convinced that he’s going to beat Ruiz in the rematch, that he would likely ignore anyone in his team telling to wait on a rematch.
Parker: This was the first time for Joshua being pressured
“AJ’s style, when we see him fighting, he moves back, but a lot of the fights, he likes to come forward,” said Joseph Parker to skysports.com. “I guess this is sort of a first experience of fighting someone who just continuously puts pressure on. AJ threw nice shots and connected with Andy, but Andy is a fighter who takes two to three punches to throw three, four, five, six back,” said Parker.
Wladimir Klitschko, arguably the toughest opponent on Joshua’s resume, was backing away from him most of their fight in 2017. When Wladimir did put pressure on Joshua in the sixth round, he knocked him down, and had him close to being knocked out. Joshua couldn’t handle the tiny bit of pressure that wladimir put on him. For a lot of boxing fans, that fight showed that the emperor has no clothes. In other words, Wladimir exposed Joshua as being a vulnerable fighter with a weak chin, poor boxing skills, and terrible stamina.
Joshua is used to being the bully in his fights, and when Ruiz failed to react timidly, he fell apart mentally and physically.
Parker says Joshua was too muscle-bound to move against Ruiz
“I guess I’m able to move, because I’m a little bit smaller,” said Parker in giving himself credit for not having lost to Ruiz. “With AJ’s size, it might have been a bit hard for him to move around and jump around with all that muscle that he has.”
Joshua looked tired even in the first round when Ruiz Jr. was throwing only a few shots. You could see that Joshua was struggling. One could tell that Joshua was going to have problems at some point in the fight if Ruiz stepped up the pressure on him, because he was carrying too much muscle for his cardiovascular system to handle it.
Ruiz got the better of Parker the entire fight with his combination punching and his fast hands. Parker never figured Ruiz out in that fight, and he didn’t do well despite being given a controversial win. Parker’s victory over Ruiz was too controversial for him to speak from the position of an authority in how to defeat him. Overall, it was a terribly tainted win for Parker.
