Anyone think Ruiz was gonna beat AJ

AJ does technical sparring, even Haye spoke on it in a Sky interview. Rob will work on specific drills and break things up mid round and correct AJ on what he needs to do. They don't go hard on the punches like that to perserve himself for his fights. For the 2nd Ruiz camp, I assume that he was going hard in camp but for the last couple of years he has eased up on hard sparring.

 

No but I thought Povetkin would beat him, and thought Parker would have been much more dangerous to AJ than Ruiz was.

I subscribed to the triangle theory that because Ruiz lost to Parker, and Parker lost to AJ, then that meant Ruiz must lose to AJ. Styles make fights as they say, really good example here.

Makes me wonder if Parker really missed a chance vs AJ. Also makes me wonder if Ruiz did win the Parker fight.

But there I go again with the triangle theory.

 

The biggest shock to me wasn’t Ruiz stopping Joshua, but the fact that Joshua completely underestimated Ruiz and tried to run over him, which has never been a good strategy for fighting Ruiz.

As a person that used to see Ruiz spar regularly I did warn that if Joshua was foolish enough to try to force a knockout on Ruiz he’d pay for it. In hindsight I think Joshua got overwhelmed with the occasion and felt he needed to win by knockout when in reality he just needed to win, which he did in the rematch, but the first fight did show how green Joshua still is.