Why AJ has a poor gas tank

The decline in punch power would probably be small, it certainly wouldn't be a huge difference but I find it hard to believe that say, Holyfield with his enormous steroid-fuelled traps at 217 didn't punch any harder than he did at 177. The difference in punch resistance is considerable though: muscle and fat both act as shock absorbers and extra weight has a natural inertia, so heavier men are much harder to knock over.

The psychological disadvantage of giving up 40-50 pounds of weight against Fury would be huge in itself and the physical disadvantage in the clinches would be enormous, like a cruiserweight against a super middle. That in itself would cause AJ to gas rapidly.

 

Let's not be condescending, I've seen that snoozefest running competition. You're making the mistake of assuming that the Ruiz hook in round 3 and the hook in round 8 in the rematch were identical but no two punches are identical: there's always a difference in the power, angle of impact, how aware the fighter is of the shot before it lands and how much previous punishment he's taken. There's no reason why AJ losing weight would improve his punch resistance and there are good reasons why it would decline, both in the lack of shock absorption and his ability to not get dropped. The crucial difference in the rematch was that AJ was fast and nimble enough to move away from the 20+ stone Ruiz and avoid taking any serious punishment.

 

"It could have just been the simple fact that Aj just didn't see the punch coming in the first fight and because the mystery punch landed on his temple, it concussed him badly" you're just repeating arguments I've made now about how no two shots are equal which makes it difficult to compare. It's not debatable that AJ was running away in the rematch and clinching when Ruiz got too close and therefore sustained far less punishment. In the first fight 70% of Ruiz's shots were power punches compared to 62% in the rematch and fewer landed really flush in the rematch because AJ was on shaky legs for most of the first fight and got caught a lot in exchanges where he couldn't see Ruiz's punches coming. Ruiz only landed 4 more shots over 12 rounds in the rematch than he did in the first fight and the concentration of punches was twice as great in the first fight because AJ had half the time to recover.

At some point with weight there can be diminishing returns in regards to punch power and I suspect that the morbidly obese Ruiz passed that threshold in the rematch. His hands didn't look as fast to me and he moved like he was stuck in the mud, though part of that was because AJ came in lighter and was utilising a lot of movement. Ruiz looked noticeably slower to me than in the first fight and he was slower in the first AJ fight than he was against Joseph Parker. The difference in all of those fights was approximately 15 pounds: 256 Parker, 268 AJ 1, 284 AJ 2. Hopefully Ruiz will get in (relative) shape and be back down in the 250's-260's where he's most competitive.

I don't know what the argument is at this point. If AJ comes in lighter he will be faster, more agile and have a better gas tank (provided that Fury doesn't smoother him in the clinch) but his punches will carry a little less snap, he'll have less muscle to act as a shock absorber, he'll be easier to knock over, easier to bully and drain in the clinch and psychologically feel like the much smaller man. I don't mind what he does but I doubt he will come in light.

 

If there hadn't have been a ridiculous hometown decision Savon would have knocked him out in the first round. He got another gift in the final so even Wilder's bronze was vastly more legitimate than AJ's gold.

Calling AJ "mentally weak" is not true in any other context than boxing at the highest level. He was visibly out of his element the first time he fought outside his UK fiefdom and his confidence was badly knocked in suffering the most humiliating defeat of all time to fat Andy. AJ doesn't trust his chin, his stamina or believe in his ability to beat Tyson Fury. Not being able to handle the pressure is a form of mental weakness and will make you gas out more quickly.

Israel Adesanya was an unbeaten mma middleweight champion, 20-0 and a solid favourite to move up and beat the relatively unheralded Jan Blachowicz for the light heavyweight belt. But after his loss where he was outstuck in every round, taken down in three of them to zero and controlled from power positions for 7 minutes to his 1 second, Adesanya admitted that he wasn't able to sleep the night before and that's why his energy levels apparently weren't 100%. His stamina looked fine to me but that admission exposed that he couldn't handle the pressure, that there was a weakness there mentally.

 

AJ got up but any British-level fighter would get up after being dropped once if he was physically able to do so. Tentative grandpa Wlad lost that fight more than AJ won it, repeatedly swinging telegraphed hooks and setting up nothing with his jab while AJ took 5 rounds off to get a second wind, largely just backing off in the process. AJ showed some heart in the fight but Wlad showed a hell of a lot more and he wasn't a fighter particularly known for his heart.

We also have to take account that this was AJ pre-Ruiz: even before the Ruiz fight in MSG AJ looked lost, fighting for the first time away from home and the defeat was the most humiliating of all time, something AJ isn't likely to ever fully recover from. AJ post-Ruiz has significantly less confidence and a far more tentative style.