John Ruiz - A Top 25-30 Heavyweight?

I thought he looked as good as he ever has in the second Valuev fight,a lot more positive and aggressive,the fight could have gone either way,I think Valuev may have just nicked it with the point scoring, but soft jabs.
I wouldnt put Ruiz in my top 40 heavyweights.

 

Exactly. Nice to see someone recognizes this fraud and cheater for what he is - a glorified clubfighter who would never have been rated, or gotten away with his illegal and disgraceful tactics without the influence of Don King.

 

Workhorse, he would have been a fatality in any other era:smoke

 

Ruiz's best wins on paper look up there in this range. BUT You can't just look at top wins alone. You have to look at how dominant he was against them, how dominant he was against all of his competition as a whole. And when you look in these terms he comes up very short, lets look:

Top Wins

Holyfield - OLD, arguably shot, arguably Holyfield won all their contests
Golota - Old, Golota arguably won and decked him twice
Johnson - Ruiz cheated, pretending to be fouled when he wasnt.
Rahman - Rahman was a 280lb fat blob but a decent win on paper

Loses:

Jones Jr - completely dominated losing every round
Tua - Gone in under 30 seconds
Toney - schooled by a fat old 5'9 MW, forget about the NC it was a loss
Chagaev/Valuev - pretty unspectacular fighters

So even in the last 15 years rank him below Lennox, Tyson, Ibeabuchi, Moorer, Bowe, Jones Jr, Toney, Tua, Holyfield, Wlad, Vitali, McCall, .......and probably a few others, we can bet Mercer, Bruno, Rudduck, Morrison would beat him too, some would blow him out, although their wins resume doesnt quite stack up, they arent far off either and Mercer pushed prime Lennox and Holy in close fights

 

A glorified clubfighter?

Nice post Zakman, but now you're disrespecting Rocky Balboa's days as a clubfighter before Apollo Creed gave him the opportunity of a lifetime. Spider Rico has more boxing skill than John Ruiz.

Seriously, the Kirk Johnson fight was the most disgusting, disgraceful, pathetic, excuse laden performance I've seen for any boxer. The fact that Ruiz takes pride in winning on a highly questionable foul clearly illustrates the black eye this guy constantly gives boxing any time his name is mentioned.

I've seen Floyd Patterson, Joe Frazier, Marciano and Tyson rise on their toes to throw devasting hooks.

John Ruiz is the only fighter that I've seen rise on his toes to make a body shot look more like a low blow.

Maybe the only solution to rid the boxing world of the Ruiz disease is to completely and thorougly ignore him. Perhaps I am perpetuating the negativity surrounding him by responding to any discussions about him, but's it's hard to ignore this pretender who's still opening his mouth wanting a shot at the heavyweight crown.

 

You're right. Calling Ruiz a clubfighter does do an injustice to decent, hardworking clubfighters who actually try to do the best they can with their limited skills, within the rules - guys like Chuck Wepner, for example.

As opposed to Ruiz, who tries to illegitimately disguise his limited skills by the sort of blatant cheating that you so well describe! That he and King have perpetrated this fraud, and cheated both his opponents and the fans, is nothing short of a disgrace, and it deserves more attention.

 

No way!!!

Vitali wipes his ass with the kind of guys that Ruiz has to hug and foul his way to "beat" (ie: Kirk Johnson).

Both Klitschkos are definitely a class above Ruiz.

 

If you look at the math of being ranked top 30, that works out to an average of 3 fighters per decade to be better than Ruiz. The John Ruiz set of tools is not going to do well in that sort of scrutiny.

 

Thing is, Ruiz just clinch a lot. But a lot of his detractors rate a lot of old timers who also clinched and wrestled constantly. Double standards? Discuss.

 

There's a huge difference between clinching and tying up the opponents arms, which Carlos Monzon was very good at, versus the cheap, disgusting grab and hold tactics that Ruiz uses.

Monzon at least would punch out of the clinches while effectively tying up the oppoents arms. Ruiz holds excessively while simultaneously complaining to the ref if the opponent does the same thing to him.

Like I said, Ruiz is a disease that must be retired permanently.