Home Boxing News David Haye or John Ruiz. Who will win?

David Haye or John Ruiz. Who will win?

David Haye (23-1 21 KO) makes the first defence of perhaps the least worthy World Heavyweight crown currently available. The WBA belt has had a distinctly tarnished and shop-worn aura about it, ever since it was stripped from Lennox Lewis for failing to take on, yes you’ve guessed it, John Ruiz!

Ruiz (44-8-1-1 30 KO) comes into yet another WBA title bout, and you may be forgiven for thinking that his original challenge for the Heavyweight title came against John L Sullivan! He seems to have been around forever, and the WBA appear to be on an eternal quest to have him crowned as their champion.

Quite what Ruiz has done to deserve this shot is a mystery. He’s lost three of his last six fights and is only on a winning streak of one fight. That was a win over Adnan Serin who had a record of 19-10-1 (7 KO), hardly deserving of a shot really, but we are talking about the WBA here. Rumour has it they also run the ‘John Ruiz Appreciation Society’. A club with very few members.

A certain William Dettloff who has a blog on the Ring website feels the same. Here’s an excerpt from his look at the fight……

Conventional thinking says that if you’ve been waiting for what feels like forever for John Ruiz to get the shellacking that finally convinces him to leave us all the hell alone, you’ll get what you’ve been waiting for when he meets David Haye for some alphabet title or another on April 3.

I’ve looked forward to that day as much as anyone, as my vocation, such as it is, has mandated that I sit through innumerable Ruiz “fights” over the years, one as awful as the next for reasons with which you already are familiar. And if you are not, consider yourself fortunate.

Suffice to say that if you’ve seen Ruiz on more than a couple occasions and remain a fan of prize fighting nonetheless, you are more addicted to this vulgar profession and its attendant ugliness than is probably healthy. Bless you.

Ruiz’s prime, if you can call it that, occurred in a different era and was so aesthetically objectionable it tarnished what was a reasonable record of accomplishment.

“There’s been a view among boxing people that Ruiz is maybe the worst fighter in the world to watch, and by popular demand does not belong on television.” HBO‘s Max Kellerman told me.

If Ruiz cannot win, if Haye’s speed, youth, and power are too much for him, then let it be a decisive and demonstrative win of such a convincing nature that Ruiz never thinks of entering a boxing ring again.

Because if it’s a close decision that can be debated, it’ll be years until we’re done with this guy. And no one wants that.

As you can see, Ruiz isn’t what you’d call popular. His style of fighting is not easy on the eye, but it may hold the key to victory for him in his fight with Haye. More of that later.

As for Haye, he’s about to take part in only his fourth contest at Heavyweight. After knocking out Tomasz Bonin in a round, and dropping back down to Cruiserweight to pick up the WBC, WBA WBO & Ring Magazine belts, he stopped Monte Barrett in five rounds. That victory earned him a shot at the WBA title held by the huge Nikolay Valuev, a fight he won on points, after rocking Valuev badly in the final round.

This is a huge fight for the defending champion, a win will see him likely face either or both of the Klitschko brothers. A defeat for Haye will be the end of the road. A loss to Ruiz would be very damaging indeed, enough to end his career at the top with nowhere else to go. If, as Haye does, you make a habit of mouthing off, the crash after a defeat leaves you with much further to fall.

Will Haye be defeated though? It’s unlikely to happen, but there are some danger signs for the Bermondsey man to watch out for.

If Haye starts the fight with Ruiz slowly, he could be dragged in to fighting the challenger’s type of fight. Afterall, Ruiz is hugely experienced and is usually durable. His one and only KO defeat came against David Tua, where he was pole axed inside one round.

Was he caught cold? Maybe, as he’s never been in that much trouble again, but if Haye can land early maybe he can produce a similar result. There have been suspicions that David’s power isn’t quite so ferocious at the higher weight, but Valuev certainly felt the force of Haye’s punching.

Nikolay gave an unusual rendition of a tap dancing drunk when Haye finally landed flush toward the end of their fight. Ruiz could certainly go the same way if caught square on the chin from one of David’s ‘Haymakers’.

The best chance Ruiz has of winning the fight is to try and test Haye’s stamina. He needs to lean on Haye, pummel the body and tire him, before unleashing some hurtful punches late in the fight. It won’t look pretty, but it’s John’s best chance of success. Remember Haye may have gone the full twelve rounds in his last fight, but he wasn’t under the sort of pressure that can induce tiredness late in a fight.

Ruiz may well be anywhere between ten and twenty pounds or more heavier than Haye, he has to make that advantage count. Especially as he will not have a reach advantage over the champion, both have the same reach at 78 inches, but Haye is the taller man by one inch.

I think it’s unlikely to happen though. Haye, at twenty-nine, is too fast and too strong for the thirty-eight year old Ruiz. His punches can be devastating, and will prove too much for the aging challenger.

David needs to start fast, immediately take the fight to Ruiz, and put him on the back foot. His intention has to be to get the challenger out of there as quickly as possible, certainly inside of three rounds. It may well be a similar story to the Barrett fight, multiple knockdowns scored by Haye before the referee intervenes to save Ruiz.

David cannot under any circumstances start slowly and let Ruiz work his way into the fight. He needs make a huge statement in the division and take out Ruiz early in an exciting, dynamic manner. Something that the ultra cautious Wladimir Klitschko would never dream of doing.

Haye inside of three rounds is my prediction. He can then get on with the business of trying to lure either, or indeed both, Klitschko’s into the ring for a mouth-watering unification fight, hopefully sometime later in the year.