The Number That Matters
Right then. Forget the press conference, forget the ring walk, forget the Hearn hype. The only thing that told you anything about this Andy Ruiz comeback happened on Thursday afternoon in Newark, and it was a number on a scale: 254.3lbs. That is the lightest Ruiz has been since July 2018 — before Anthony Joshua, before the belts, before the Snickers jokes and the 283.7lb rematch that undid it all. Make no mistake, that is a man who has finally taken a camp seriously.
Standing across from him tonight is Damian Knyba, who weighed 255.5lbs. Barely a pound between them — but the Pole is 6ft 7in with a reach that goes on for days, so the numbers hide a proper size mismatch. Ruiz will be giving away five inches in height and fighting a man who wants to keep this at the end of a jab all night.
Why 254 Changes Everything
Let's not beat around the bush about what happened to Ruiz after Madison Square Garden. He shocked the world at 268lbs in June 2019, then turned up in Saudi Arabia six months later at nearly 284 and got boxed for twelve rounds by a Joshua who had learned his lesson. He has admitted it himself: he did not prepare, and the weight was the proof. Since then it has been three fights in six years — Jarrell Miller the last of them, a broken hand and a majority draw in August 2024 that nobody wanted to talk about.
Now he is back with Manny Robles, the trainer who built the version that beat AJ, and 254.3 is the first hard evidence that the partnership means something. Ruiz at his best is a fast-handed swarmer who gets inside a taller man and throws four-punch combinations you cannot back away from. That fighter needs legs. At 284 he had none. At 254 he might just have them again.
The Knyba Problem
Nobody is pretending Knyba is a world-beater, but he is not a walkover either. He is big, he is 30, he has lost only once and he has one thing Ruiz has struggled with when he is out of shape: length. If Ruiz cannot close the distance and Knyba gets a rhythm going behind the jab, this becomes ugly quickly. The Pole knows a win here is by far the biggest of his career — expect him to fight like it.
Hearn's Big Claim
Eddie Hearn went on record this week saying that if Ruiz looks good on Friday, he can beat Filip Hrgovic, Moses Itauma, Daniel Dubois and Agit Kabayel. That is a promoter talking — but with Usyk gone from the belts and Itauma's aura dented in Riyadh, the division is more open than it has been in a decade. A sharp, 254lb Ruiz is a nightmare stylistically for every one of those names. If you know, you know.
Luke's Verdict
I have gone back and forth on this all week, and the weigh-in settled it. A Ruiz who has done the work is levels above Damian Knyba. He will take a couple of rounds to find the range, eat a few jabs, and then start landing that right hand over the top the way he did against Joshua. My prediction: Ruiz gets inside, breaks Knyba down to the body and stops him somewhere between rounds six and eight. Then the real fun starts. Keep it on our news page for the result overnight and the fallout from Newark.