Boxing News Roundup (June 3, 2019): Andy Ruiz Jr scores astonishing upset, more

Miss anything this weekend? Good heavens, imagine if you missed this weekend and this is how you found out.

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Just a couple days ago, Joshua-Ruiz fight week was wrapping up. No buzz, really — I mean, more buzz than an average show, because Anthony Joshua is a big star and a heavyweight to boot, but nothing particularly out of the ordinary compared to what you’d expect. About on par with Wilder-Breazeale a couple weeks ago.

Then the boxing world turned upside down, Andy Ruiz Jr dropped Joshua four times and stopped him, and we suddenly had the biggest boxing story of 2019.

We’ve looked at the fight from various angles. Michael Woods and Lewis Watson both shared their takes on the momentous upset. I did the weekly “what’s next?” thing, figuring we get the rematch, but we’ll see. And of course, the Drake Curse struck again.

Boxing Twitter, of course, went mad, with basically every big name out there giving their thoughts, including heavyweight rivals Deontay Wilder and Tyson Fury, who came out with very different takes.

Ruiz’s post-fight press conference was really something. In true, pure big boy fashion, he had a basketball jersey with a t-shirt underneath, and he didn’t rant and rave or even gloat much — he said everyone underestimated him, of course, but it was just the same tone of confidence he had for weeks before the fight, only now he’d proven himself very right.

Joshua’s post-fight press conference was interesting, too. He congratulated Ruiz and didn’t complain about the stoppage or anything else, saying he’ll go back to work and come back from this loss.

As for a rematch, some reasonably wondered if the sanctioning bodies might strip Ruiz of a belt or two, but Eddie Hearn says he doesn’t think that’ll be a problem. He notes that the next mandatory due is the WBO, and they don’t even have a mandatory challenger.

And now it’s on to the next. Gennadiy Golovkin returns next Saturday on DAZN against Steve Rolls, and Oscar Valdez defends his featherweight belt against Jason Sanchez on ESPN. Both figure to be mismatches. So did Joshua-Ruiz. This week’s schedule is up.

Quick Hits

Photo by Al Bello/Getty Images

• It might have gotten more attention if Joshua-Ruiz had gone as expected, but the Saturday DAZN card also featured a really good fight between Katie Taylor and Delfine Persoon, which Taylor won via majority decision. There’s some controversy here, and at the least, Persoon deserves a rematch. Michael Woods broke the fight down round-by-round.
• For more results from the weekend, check out the results roundup, with notes on wins for Callum Smith, Chris Algieri, Joshua Buatsi, Ivan Redkach, and much more.
• There wasn’t much for pure “news” the last couple days, but a couple things are floating around, notably that the Sergey Kovalev-Anthony Yarde fight isn’t going to happen on June 29, it appears, which isn’t particularly surprising. That whole thing just — I don’t want to say it seemed “too good to be true,” because it’s just Kovalev-Yarde in some respects, but it seemed too something to be true. Too easy, maybe.