Early in the fight : Ruiz and Joshua lock horns as the crowd roared on the fighters
James Buster Douglas : Remember him? He was the fighter who took on Mike Tyson when the then undisputed heavyweight boxing champion of the world was at the peak of his powers. The fight took place at the Tokyo Dome, Tokyo, Japan on February 11, 1990. The boxing world was shocked when Tyson was knocked out by the unfancied Douglas who had just lost his mother.
History has a way of repeating itself. Anthony Joshua, the Briton who holds four of the five world boxing heavyweight belts, has just been beaten by an unfancied, seemingly out-of-shape Mexican Andy Ruiz Jnr. Joshua lost the WBA, WBO, IBO and IBF titles to a man who vowed that he would rather die in the ring than lose the fight.
The fight took place June 1 at the Madison Square Garden. Joshua was flabbergasted when the referee, Mike Griffin, waved off hostilities following the Briton's fourth visit to the New York City canvas. The stoppage came in the seventh round. Apparently, it was to save Joshua from further punishment.
Although Ruiz looked like he had come straight from McDonalds, he still had sufficient skills to teach the muscle-bound Londoner one or two lessons in boxing.
The shock defeat was almost as seismic as Tyson's defeat by Douglas although it was not as massive since Joshua has not achieved such greatness as Iron Mike. The Mexican had been foolishly under-rated because he looked out of shape.
Now, there are only two left at the top of the mountain, Deontay Wilder and Tyson Fury. Wilder was scathing of the defeated champion after his loss to the flabby Mexican. This was considering that Joshua had intended to use the fight to remind Wilder who is the real world heavyweight champion.
The American warrior who holds the WBC belt said, ''He wasn’t a true champion. His whole career was consisted of lies, contradictions and gifts. Facts.
And now we know who was running from who!”
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