Who is Joshua's best win since Povetkin in 2018?

1. Ruiz
2. Pulev

Franklin might be better than Wallin as well

 

Have to go with Ruiz rematch, but its been pretty poor from AJ since losing the first fight with Ruiz.

Ruiz - was a little bit of a lucky champion, his level at his best then was a mid to fairly strong contender.
Pulev - faded a lot by then - mid to strong gatekeeper
Franklin - also mid to strong gatekeeper who was in his prime then
Helenius - mid gatekeeper
Wallin - weak to mid gatekeepr
Ngannou - Lol

 

Still Ruiz, despite the terrible shape.

It does seem that his best days were 2015-2018, but he should get his stale-but-still-big win against Wilder, and when Usyk retires, picking up a third belt is not out of the question. All-in-all, a pretty good career one way or the other.

 

Rinsing millions off the public is his biggest victory

 

Chisora chins him
Kabayel chins him
Bakole buries him
Zhang buries him
Hurgovic gives him hell for leather
Dubious chins him 9 times out of 10.

AJ is done. Not even a contendor anymore. They want someone who is low risk but looks respectable and Eddie has no options. Even low power Hurgovic is too risky. They need people who have no power like Wallin and that is not heavyweight boxing right now...funnily enough the only two men without power are Fury & Usyk who are the top crop who he doesn't deserve.

 

And yet he's not the one who lost to Ngannou.

Oh, sorry, won by twelve jabs.

 

It's actually surprising to observe the lack of quality post 2018. Save for Wilder (a name that doesn't marry well with quality), the same is true of Fury. Over-privileged positions. Inactivity. The usual culprits.

 

What matches have they hyped, though? I am a fan and I put him in a similar cluster with Fury, Bowe, Norton, Walcott, Patterson...other guys who had very high high-spots but could not be consistent due to weaknesses of body or character.

 

When you say it like that, it makes AJ's run look pretty bad.

But it's actually worse than that, because Pulev was not only past it but just coming off Covid too and didn't pull out because he already cancelled previously with an injury. Because of that it wasn't even a legit bout just like the Povetkin v Whyte rematch. These people coming off Covid were absolutely not fit to perform in high-level sport and it's pretty ironic that the board of control had no problem sanctioning these fights while pretending to care about fighter health.

And the other thing about Ruiz is that he didn't just get fat. I remember his trainer basically admitting that Ruiz wasn't showing up to gym and this is someone that already wasn't showing up enough according to GGG's trainer. So AJ beat probably the worst Ruiz ever seen since turning pro.

I think what's worse though is that AJ actually could have potentially had a win over Wilder, even Fury, but he became the most protected fighter the world has ever known. He lost his courage, and that's pretty sad.

 

Ruiz easily, rankedn in the top 5
Then Wallin, ranked in the top ten
Then Pulev, has been ranked in the top ten.

 

I agree with most of the rest but Chisora?? At least give him that bro.

 

Ruiz was easily top 5 when they met the second time but why?

Because he beat Joshua, that's why.

You can hardly give Joshua additional credit for beating a guy when the only reason the guy ranks so high is because he beat Joshua.

 

aj didn't stop Ruiz either