Andy Ruiz Jnr stunned the boxing world, and Anthony Joshua, on this day in 2019 when he handed the WBA, IBF and WBO heavyweight champion his first defeat in seven unforgettable rounds.
There were glaring clues throughout fight week that something was amiss, but such was the ridiculous conclusion they pointed to - fringe contender Andy Ruiz beating the all-conquering Anthony Joshua - pretty much everyone in attendance chose to ignore them.
Joshua, then unbeaten, was expected to win by KO on June 1, 2019. Ruiz, who'd stepped into Jarrell Miller's shoes when "Big Baby" kept failing drug tests, was treated like the underdog he was all week. Even Joshua treated Ruiz in such a manner. When Joshua had faced the likes of Dillian Whyte, Wladimir Klitschko, Joseph Parker and even Carlos Takam, there was an awareness of danger.
However, in New York, the Englishman at no point seemed threatened by his challenger's presence. He joked with him. He liked him, even allowing Ruiz to hold the belts at the midweek press conference. But never did Joshua appear to truly respect Ruiz, at least not as a fighter who had any chance in the fight. Joshua treated Ruiz more like a competition winner, in fact, going out of his way to make sure the kid with the omnipresent grin was having a good time.
The champion said all the right things before leaving for New York. He spoke of his opponent's fast, powerful hands and of the damage they'd done. But once he set eyes on Ruiz for the first time, five days before the fight, Joshua all but put his feet up, presuming the job was already done. Joshua is a hulking, intimidating presence. The same cannot be said for Ruiz. Advertised as six-feet-two-inches, he looked markedly shorter than that as he looked up to Joshua, on the 15th floor of a Manhattan hotel, with an adoring grin on his face.
His perfectly round head sat on his perfectly round body and so cartoon-like his appearance, and so loveable his manner, any notion of him winning the fight seemed preposterous.
But Ruiz made no secret of his plans. He told us all he would stifle Joshua, he would catch him coming in, he would attack the body and go for broke with looping hooks. He showed us, too, at the open workouts where Joshua did very little besides endorsing his sponsors. Ruiz, however, worked up a sweat while showcasing the punches that, only days later, would end Joshua's reign.
At the final press conference, after Joshua had allowed Ruiz to try on the belts for size, Joshua would field numerous questions about Deontay Wilder, the WBC beltholder and everyone's opponent of choice for "AJ". But nobody had the decency to ask him about the man he was going to be fighting on Saturday night.
We should have known better. The clues had not just been there in fight week; they’d been there in the monumental struggle to get past Klitschko, in the stumble he survived against Whyte, and in the way he started to fade against Takam. We’d asked Joshua about those moments; we’d seen him get prickly at the suggestion he was still learning on the job. But if those wobbles were thorns in Joshua’s side, then Ruiz would soon become the knife to his throat.
Though self-deprecating outside the ring, Ruiz was exceptionally confident on the inside. A boxer since the age of seven, and now coached by Manny Robles, he understood what he had to do. Lulling Joshua into a false sense of security beforehand may or may not have been part of the plan but, unquestionably, it started a ball rolling that would soon sprout hooks and uppercuts and clatter into Joshua with such force it would send him to the canvas four times.
For the first two-and-a-bit rounds, however, Joshua was in control. A swift right hand hurt Ruiz in the third before a supreme left hook sent him to the mat. He would get up with senses intact. Joshua, enlivened and conscious of impressing the American audience, stepped in to finish matters. He opened up and, while doing so, invited Ruiz to counter. A left hook screwed into Joshua’s temple. A quartet of blows followed, concluded by two right hands, which resulted in the favourite down on all fours, eyes glazed.
Members of the media grabbed each other’s arms in shock. The crowd inside Madison Square Garden, after being momentarily stunned into silence, roared in appreciation of the drama. It was a stunning change of direction, a pivotal moment from which Joshua never recovered.
He would be floored again in the third, survive the fourth, fifth and sixth, before two further knockdowns in the seventh brought an end to the contest, with Joshua not responding to the referee's instruction to show he was okay. Ruiz was declared the winner.
Even then, as Ruiz bounced up and down in celebration, it still felt like the land of make believe.
