I don’t know if The Fat Lady is about to sing, but I’m pretty sure The Fat Man hasn’t missed a meal. It seems the only running unified heavyweight champion Andy Ruiz Jr. did in the run up for today’s Ringling Brothers “sportswashing” event in Diriyah, Saudi Arabia was a Taco Bell style ‘Run For The Border’.
A less than svelte, 268 lb Ruiz Jr did the Wall Street and Las Vegas unthinkable by rising from a thunderous 3rd round knockdown to drop, pummel and stop a befuddled Anthony Joshua on June 1 via 7th round TKO. I was to attend that fight at Madison Square Garden and chose not to, bothered by what I deemed a highly questionable and suspicious “washing” of Jarrell “Big Baby” Miller from the proceedings.
In my estimation, a Mexican “Butterbean” with an entire nation behind him was better business than a dangerous badass from Brooklyn who produced fear in the eyes of AJ. Though I thought Joshua would overcome that to defeat Big Baby, I saw all I needed to see at the launch event at the same MSG for their fight that wasn’t.
It wasn’t good politics, which is the same thing as bad business.
For that reason, I didn’t see their first fight until a few days later. I do not trust Eddie Hearn or DAZN, then or now, for historic precedent I deem valid. This fight has NO BUSINESS in Saudi Arabia, as so beautifully chronicled by the lovely expert of all things pugilist Gayle Falkenthal in “Ruiz Joshua 2 Sportswashing Rocks The Casbah.”
The November 2018 RING article titled “Fast Eddie”, written with a lobbyist’s touch by what felt like a bought Gareth A. Davies, left such a Pepto Bismal taste in my revisionist sensitive mouth that the event became distasteful. So is this one. For those very reasons, I will not be watching the rematch between these two for very principled reasons not unlike the first, although the circumstances are a little different.
I am beyond tired of corruption in boxing, along with a decided slant toward all things corporate for dirty petrodollars that exclude the common fan. I’ll gather that a quick scan of the 15,000 or so seats at Diriyah Arena (mind you, Joshua routinely boasts 90,000 plus fans in London, while a rematch with Ruiz in Mexico could have easily put over 100,000 asses in seats to boost the Mexican economy for THEIR champion) won’t include any of the blue collar people both Ruiz or Joshua truly represent. The only such “real person” in Saudi Arabia will be Harold Knight, who just happens to be my hometown childhood hero and the former trainer of true heavyweight champion Lennox Lewis. It’s why I’m picking AJ…
