Andy Ruiz Jr rode three knockdowns to a close decision win over Luis Ortiz tonight, earning his second win in a row following his 2019 rematch loss to Anthony Joshua.
Ruiz won with scores of 113-112, 114-111 and 114-111. Taking three points from Ortiz due to knockdowns, that would mean two judges had him tied on rounds, 6-6, and one judge had Ortiz win seven rounds to Ruiz’s five. Bad Left Hook also scored 113-112 for Ruiz on our unofficial undercard.
It was a fight with bursts of action, mainly in the second round, where Ruiz scored two of his takedowns. It should be noted that the second was a questionable judgment by referee Thomas Taylor, and had it not been counted, Ruiz would still have won, but by split decision, and both scorecards coming his way would have been for a single point. . We’d probably be talking a bit more about the controversy in that case.
But the 43-year-old Ortiz (33-3, 28 KOs) didn’t put a real stamp on this fight, either. Most of the rounds seemed to go whichever way Andy Ruiz came at them. If he relaxed too much, it was easy to score them for Ortiz, whose jabs arguably carried rounds where, frankly, nothing was happening at all. And it wasn’t hard to find six or seven of those for the Cuban.
Ruiz (35-2, 22 KOs) was facing a southpaw for the first time as a pro, and it definitely showed, including the former champion who usually circled the “wrong” path, in the powerful hand of Ortiz. He never fully bit into it though, as Ortiz no longer has the legs to catch opponents off guard other than timing them, and Ruiz was able to take advantage of that, also using his own quickness and hand speed to bite. Ortiz quite often, which Ortiz couldn’t do much about because he’s slow now.
It wasn’t the stellar performance you might have wanted to see from Ruiz, but much of it was very smart and gets the job done. She won’t fight many fighters like Ortiz, and she knew Ortiz was also dangerous with his power and timing, if he gave her too many chances. We almost saw it late in the second round, when Ortiz hit him, and Ruiz clearly felt it. The fight was never the same from there apart from a good run in the seventh round when Ruiz dropped Ortiz for the third time.
“I thought I did a beautiful job boxing him,” Ruiz said. “It was pretty tough, but the skill that I have, my counterpunching, hitting him and knocking him down, it was a blessing.”
Ruiz said he wants to be more active. “I don’t want to wait that long to fight. I want to fight at least three or four times again. I’m ready, man, I’m hungry, I want to be champion again.”
Deontay Wilder, who returns Oct. 15 against Robert Helenius, and had about 20 percent of the total broadcast devoted to him tonight, was in attendance, and Ruiz said he would also welcome him as his next fight: “He and I they are in the same organization, Al Haymon can make this fight happen. Let’s do it, let’s get going.”
“Anyone who said ‘King Kong’ is old, I gave them a war today. I felt like I put up a great fight tonight,” Ortiz said through an interpreter, adding that he would like a rematch. “Do you think I’m done? You saw a war here tonight. Do people think ‘King Kong’ is over?
