I think he could have battered Ruiz more to the point they pulled him out. He seems like a hard man to KO. I think he held back on the attacks a bit due to the huge pressure involved.
Almost anyone else would have hit the deck and wouldnt have been abpe to get back up until well past the count. A sizable portion of them would have been spark out completely unconcious. It was a GREAT punch and where it hit Ruiz and subsequently the way it pushed it/snapped it was brutal and would have caused most to be in a dire situation. Ruiz ate it and for 1/8 of a second he acknowledged it and then marched forward again. People can say what they want about Ruiz -- most of it is totally warranted, but nobody can ever say he isn't tough, doesn't have a good chin, doesn't have massive balls. By now hes proven that multiple times over. Ruiz will march forward into certain death and have the trigger pinned going cyclic until it happens.
Joshua was afraid to try that. He could have gotten the ko...or been ko'd. Sure he won...but he stunk up the joint.
Ruiz is a specialist in throwing hard punches to the temple and rabbit punches when the opponent clinches. AJ risked to be knocked down/out like in the 1st fight but this time he was very clever to limit the clinches.
there were several times he kinda did later in the fight, just in a much smarter way than the first time around. Despite nearly lifting Ruiz’s body of the canvas with some of his punches, and landing the right hand that sent Povetkin reeling at least a dozen times, Ruiz at no point appeared hurt or even buzzed. The Man’s chin was forged in the fires of Hephaestus himself, it’s at least Wach level.
As others have said, maybe he could've stopped him, but at great risk of being stopped himself and seeing his career almost brought to a standstill. It would've been a long, expensive and tricky road back to anywhere near challenging for 3 belts and realistically a guy worth 100m+ may not even have thought it worth the candle. As it is, he's not only won back his belts but he's done so without shipping any serious damage and should be ok to fight again in relative short order. Ironically losing that fight has probably boosted his profile and interest in his career in his home market, so he's back on course and will hope to make the Ruiz JR loss seem less of a catastrophe and more of a blip.
His game plan was sound and the right thing to do and you can tell even at the end that Ruiz was never hurt and still had the explosiveness to hurt Aj
I dont reqognize Wach being down even once in his career. And he has absorbed a huge amount of punishment. Clearly not Wach level. More like Vitali Klitschko level.
Mistake. He tried to engage 2-3 times and came off worse. Whenever he tried it he got countered. He fought the perfect fight.
No, I don't think they will go for a trilogy. Outcome will be the same. Ruiz cannot handle success. Too easy to live it up. Too hard to discipline with tons of cash.
I’m thinking AJ will be adopting a fight style that minimizes engaging his opponent. We have the jab and grab fight style to look forward too. If he tries to engage his opponent, that china chin leaves him vulnerable. Future opponents know his vulnerabilities, they will be swinging for the fences.
Every time they traded (very few times) it was heart in mouth if you were an AJ fan as Ruiz wanted to engage and was a very dangerous opponent in that circumstance.
