Andy Ruiz's Comeback Is Falling Apart: Four Fights, Five Years, No Answers

Andy Ruiz Jr shocked the sport in June 2019 when he stopped Anthony Joshua to become the unified heavyweight champion. Seven years and one loss to Damian Knyba later, that night looks less like the start of something and more like the ceiling he'll never touch again.

The math is brutal. Four comebacks in five years, and Ruiz has looked worse in each one. He turns the corner on nothing. At 37, with a career built on weight fluctuations, inactivity and a chronic lack of discipline, the runway for a heavyweight who rode a razor-thin margin to the top in the first place has basically vanished.

The Knyba Loss Says Everything

Nobody's pretending Knyba is a serious contender. He's a fringe guy who fought a smart fight and earned whatever comes next within the strange logic of boxing. But losing to a fighter of that level isn't a fluke for Ruiz anymore — it's the trend. The tools that made him dangerous in 2019, the hand speed and the counters that overwhelmed Joshua, aren't showing up. What's left is a fighter whose body finally caught up to years of gaining and cutting weight, then doing it again.

There isn't an obvious fix. You can't out-strategize a lack of focus and inactivity, and a heavyweight this far off the path doesn't just find his way back with a good camp. Ruiz might never have beaten Joshua in a rematch even in shape — but the years since have torched the legacy that one night should have started.

Vergil Ortiz Waits, Bradley's Ghost Haunts

Elsewhere on the mailbag docket: Vergil Ortiz. The messy standoff with Golden Boy is reportedly settled, and Ortiz should be back in the ring before the end of 2026. Temper expectations on the return itself — it'll be a rust-shaker after a long layoff — but there's no reason he can't rebuild toward the fight everyone actually wants, Ortiz against Boots Ennis in 2027.

And a fun hypothetical worth entertaining: how would Timothy Bradley have handled the 2010s PBC welterweight crop? A prime Errol Spence was always going to be a nightmare matchup. But against Shawn Porter, Keith Thurman and Danny Garcia? Bradley held his own with anyone. He fought mean, he fought tough, and that grit travels across eras better than most highlight-reel skills do.

It's fight week for Conor Benn, too — the 25-1 welterweight (14 KO) preparing to share a ring with Ryan Garcia. Which keeps the nepo-baby debate alive: for all the second-generation names that flatter to deceive, the two best of the bunch, Floyd Mayweather Jr and Tyson Fury, came from fathers who never made real money in the sport. So much for the head start.