I'm picking Ruiz. It's rare for someone to come back right away from a thorough beatdown at heavyweight like that. I can't really even think of one good example since Ingo--Patterson.
I fancy joshua for it. Ruiz was great on the night and deserves all the credit in the world. But the temple shot made joshua look a lot worse than he is. Was made to look like a b level fighter and probably ended up making ruiz look better than he actually is. Not just that but bearing in mind joshua took a beating....he now has to go away and work on stuff to improve on his last performance. They know what they need to work on..whereas andys a bit in the dark...because it went so well for him. Joshuas team should know what needs to be done...ruiz needs to have the answers for it bearing in mind their not too sure what the new gameplan will be....if it even is a new gameplan. You,d tend to think the improvement will come from joshua. I still say if joshua commits to his attack....he,ll get somewhere. His boxing on the backfoots got him in this mess in the first place. Hes not good enough to be klitchko mark 2. The real question is....will his lack of ability to take a shot....forcing him into fighting that way. Kind of looks like it could be the problem. Either way he has to go for it...cause ruiz combination punches gave him nightmares. Was getting success even before the temple shot. Still fancying joshua tho....the truth is he shouldnt really be causing joshua too much trouble. It is sink or swim time for him tho.
No. Look stranger things have happened but I'll be extremely surprised, the first fight was a dominant win for Ruiz and I saw nothing to indicate that was a fluke.
I fancied AJ and I fancy AJ again, the first one wasn't a "lucky win" or anything - but AJ effectively got cocky and went for the kill as though he was fighting a tin can and he was very very wrong. Ruiz was never going to be an easy target, but now AJ really appreciates it... I think there is a fair chance this is less competitive than a lot of people are expecting
For some reason, it’s more difficult to make a pick this time. I picked Andy in a rematch comfortably for a while now, but I’m not sure I can take his weight loss as a good thing. If anything, it appears to be a bad thing in my personal view. I’ll still pick him by UD, but I’m definitely less confident with my pick than previously.
AJ inside 4. He would have prepared accordingly with his sparring and training specifically for Ruiz's counter work. There is a part of me that wants to see AJ loose though. Nothing would make me more happy then to see that Wilder never gets that mega payday from AJ, even at the expense of him loosing to Ruiz in the rematch. Plus i'm not rocking with Hearn right now since the whole PED case with Dillian.