Hvywt John Ruiz's all-time standing

No...but pretty close.

He gets pretty underrated but I understand why, he was a very average fighter who did above average things because it seems refs did not know how to properly deal with his approach and he more then likely got a lot of help from King who tried unsuccessfully to tap into the Latino market to get them to watch the heavies.

 

Not by far. Look at his body of work. He and Byrd have the best resume after 2000 with the exception of Wlad - perhaps. He always showed up in shape, gave always his best, tried everything to win, was humble an nice outside of it and does very much for others, he was also very respectful and did no trashtalk and he always tried to fight the best. Yes, he had an ugly style, yes his team tried to win fights outside of the ring but overall I think he was quite a good champ. Imo he was one of the great hws of his time alongside Wlad and Byrd.

 

No, there are far worse fighters. L. Spinks was little more than a journeyman after his fights with Ali. Briggs was game against Lewis, but probably should've lost the fight with Foreman. The Liakhovic win was excellent though. Willard would've lost to Johnson on basically any other ruleset of the 20th century, and that was a fat and old version of Johnson.



Sidenote - Ruiz never was THE champ as Spinks, Briggs and Willard were. But he was ranked in the top5 for several years in in or near the top10 for something like eight years now. Love him or hate him, that's a pretty big accomplishment.

 

Ruiz was just a solid heavyweight with basic skills and durability. IMO he was robbed against Holyfield, first fight. 116-112.

 

Ruiz is no where near the worst champ.
Guys like Sam Peter, Bruce Seldon, Buster Douglas, Hasim Rahman, Oleg Maskaev, Leon Spinks, Lamon Brewster, etc were worse champs than the Quietman.

 

Ruiz is far from being the worst heavyweight champion of all time. I would say that Ruiz rates somewhere around the median in terms of ability relative to other historical heavyweight champions.

Ruiz has gotten a bum rap from fans and critics because of his boring style. Overall, though, he has proven to be effective in the ring and long lasting as a force in the heavyweight division.

The guy isn't great, but he deserves much more credit than his critics give him.

 

Ruiz has gotten a bad rap because he put himself into that position with his shitty ass style.

He is not the worst by any means, however.

That's a tie between Primo Carnera, Leon Spinks, and Jess Willard.

 

Neither Willard or Carnera are that bad, even after 2000 we had a bunch of worse champs.

 

He is not the worst but he is definitely one of the most boring.

 

Ruiz used to actually be a boxer puncher, strangely enough.

Tua changed his mindset completely, but his earlier work is often glossed over and all but forgotten.

 

You have a valid point there. Ruiz was only a title holder, not a real champion. He should be compared to other title holders, like Terell, Ellis or those underachievers that failed to hold on to their titles in the early 80's, rather than to champs from one-champ eras.
And during the last 15 years or so we've had countless titleholders who did worse than the quiet man.
He doesn't stand out in any way. He was only outstanding in being very ordinary.
He certainly was one of the least talented but he was also one of the most consistent.
That's John Ruiz to me:
Very consistent at being untalented, doing well by not being good, he'll be best remembered for being very forgettable.

 

Despite his style, he holds some solid wins.

 

Jess Willard was actually a pretty damn good fighter with very good tools and fantastic strength, close to all-time strongest heavyweight.

If you want to argue he was a bad champion (i.e. bad resume as champ), he was no worse than Liston in those regards.

 

Yeah, that KO I result over Patterson can't match what Willard did as champion.