By Dan Ambrose: In a move that many people expected to happen, former heavyweight champion Andy Ruiz Jr. has terminated his trainer Manny Robles one month after his loss to Anthony Joshua in a rematch on December 7 in Saudi Arabia.
According to Robles, who spoke to ESPN, he said he was told by Ruiz’s father that it was a decision made by adviser Al Haymon of Premier Boxing Champions to let him go.
Ruiz Jr. will need to focus more to save his career
There’s no word yet who Ruiz Jr. will be using as his new trainer, but it might not matter. If Ruiz is going to do his own thing, eat like mad, and train sporadically, he’s going to get poor results no matter who is brought in to put him through his paces.
It doesn’t help that Ruiz made a bundle of money from his 2 fights with Joshua, since he’s got a lot of distractions now. It’s hard to train obviously when you’re focusing on buying stuff and appreciating all your new possessions.
Whatever chance Ruiz Jr. (33-2, 22 KOs) had of beating Joshua (23-1, 21 KOs) in their rematch last December, it went out the window when he walked into the fight at a hefty 283 lbs. With that kind of weight, Ruiz, 30, had virtually no chance at all of beating Joshua, who proved to be fleet of foot.
Robles isn’t willing to take the blame for the Ruiz’s loss, saying that he wasn’t listening to him or his father Andy Ruiz Sr. during camp. Ruiz Jr. was on cruise control, doing his own thing and not taking instructions. Obviously the decision to come in heavy was a HUGE mistake on Ruiz’s part, but Robles has to own some of it as well.
Robles had no control over Ruiz
“He wasn’t stopping by to say hello or have lunch, that’s for sure,” Robles said to ESPN.com about a call that he received from Ruiz’s dad to have a meeting with him. “I’ve seen it coming, I’ll be honest with you…Andy was just doing whatever the hell he wanted to do. The dad, obviously with him being the manager, he just had no control over his son. None of us had control of him, for that matter,” said Robles.
Ruiz appeared to be caught completely off guard by Joshua’s decision to use a lot of movement in the rematch. Ideally, Robles should have understood right off the bat that Joshua was going to use the same game plan that he had for his fight against Joseph Parker in 2018. It was obvious that Joshua wasn’t going to go to war with Ruiz in the rematch, because he doesn’t have the punch resistance or the stamina to fight that kind of contest.
So instead, Joshua went back to his Wladimir Klitschko style that he learned from sparring with him years ago, and he was able to out-box Ruiz to get the win. Wladimir’s style can be beaten, but it takes continuous forward pressure and a lot of power shots to do that.
It’s unclear why Robles wasn’t aware of what Joshua would be trying to do in the rematch with Ruiz, because it was clear that he was going to box and move all night. To assume that Joshua would try and brawl was a huge miscalculation on Robles’ part. Everyone in the boxing world assumed going into the Joshua-Ruiz 2 rematch that Joshua would be on his bike, and would run from Ruiz the entire fight. It’s crazy that Ruiz Jr. was so surprised when that’s what Joshua did. As a result, Ruiz was completely outclassed in that fight, and Robles should have had him better prepared.
Joshua won the rematch with Ruiz by the scores 118-110, 119-109, 118-110.
Joshua’s promoter Eddie Hearn is trying to get Ruiz Jr. to agree to fight highly ranked interim WBC heavyweight champion Dillian Whyte in April. Hearn offered Ruiz Jr. a 7-figure offer, which he says he didn’t accept. Although Hearn is still interested in making the Ruiz vs. Whyte fight, it doesn’t look like it’s going to happen. It would be a pity if Ruiz ends up taking smaller money for his next fight, and loses.
Ruiz needs to learn how to negate the blueprint Joshua used to beat him
At this point, you’ve got to expect that everyone that faces Ruiz from this point on will be using the Joshua blueprint on how to beat him. So unless Ruiz learns how to defeat that ugly Klitschko style of fighting, he’s going to continue to lose.