Anthony Joshua Regains Heavyweight Belts From Andy Ruiz Jr. After Unanimous Decision Win

Anthony Joshua regained his WBO, IBF, IBO and WBA heavyweight belts in a rematch with Andy Ruiz Jr. on Saturday in Diriyah, Saudi Arabia. Joshua got the belts back via unanimous decision after fighting for 12 rounds (118-110, 118-110 & 119-109).

Joshua fought on the outside for all of the fight, consistently jabbing Ruiz away and using his height and reach advantage.

“The first time was so nice, I had to do it twice,” said Joshua in the ring after the fight, talking about becoming a two-time champion.

“I gained too much weight, but I don’t want to make any excuses,” said Ruiz, talking about coming into the fight at 283 lbs, 15 more pounds than his first meeting with Joshua.

Ruiz asked the crowd afterwards who wanted to see a trilogy fight between the two.

In the co-main event of the evening, undefeated Diego Pacheco got a first round knockout victory over Selemani Saidi in a fight that was scheduled for four rounds.

In the bout before that, rising heavyweight fighter Michael Hunter fought to a draw with 40-year-old veteran Alexander Povetkin.

Andy Ruiz vs. Anthony Joshua 2 To Take Place On December 7th In Saudi Arabia

It was announced Friday afternoon that the heavyweight rematch between Anthony Joshua and Andy Ruiz will take place on December 7th in Diriyah, Saudi Arabia. The fight was originally announced by The Athletic, with Anthony Joshua posting a poster for the event online minutes later. Rumours of the location were also reported by The Athletic earlier in the week.

The rematch comes after Andy Ruiz Jr. upset Anthony Joshua in a seven round performance, scoring four knockdowns. The fight gave him the WBA Super, IBF, WBO and IBO Heavyweight championships which Joshua had before.

With the tagline “Clash of The Dunes,” the rematch will take place in a newly built outdoor stadium, per Mike Coppinger of The Athletic. It was also reported that a press conference will take place in London on Monday by Eddie Hearn of Matchroom Boxing and Saudi Arabian representatives.

Prior to the recent days, rumours floated around about many locations for the rematch. The three big locations that people talked about were the USA, Mexico and the United Kingdom.

Laying Down Leather #3: Shock at MSG, RIZIN 16 and More!

Good morning and welcome to the latest article of Laying Down Leather, where I put down my thoughts related to many sports and arts covered on the site.

This week I covered Pancrase and RIZIN for the site. I didn’t get the chance to cover the Anthony Joshua versus Andy Ruiz Jr. fight, although I did witness and have some things to say about it. Let’s go through the topics for this week.

Boxing

This weekend we saw the unpredictable, viral and shocking upset of Anthony Joshua losing to Andy Ruiz Jr. in New York. I didn’t expect that Joshua would lose, and even then, I wouldn’t predict he would lose in something that took so long. Ruiz now holds many of the top Heavyweight boxing championships. He’s one of the three pillars now, with Deontay Wilder (WBC Champion) and Tyson Fury (lineal champion) being the two others. I thought the whole event was great because it showed the unpredictability of boxing. On top of that, this thing went pretty viral. There’s tons of clips, tweets, memes and more that have surpassed the six figure digit of shares online that relate to this. And that’s not something that would happen if this fight went Joshua’s way. The last time I saw this sort of viral sharing from boxing was when Floyd Mayweather beat Tenshin Nasukawa or when Tyson Fury got up in the 12th round against Deontay Wilder.

Let me share my story relating to Anthony Joshua’s fight on Saturday. I was travelling home from work when the fight was happening. I was at the station when a friend texted me that the fight was in the third round. I wasn’t happy that I was missing the fight, but I thought it wasn’t worth the mobile data to watch. It wasn’t the only thing I wasn’t happy about, as I had to wait upwards of 25 minutes for the next bus home. But then I got another notification. It was Ariel Helwani saying “Andy Ruiz just dropped Anthony Joshua in the third round of their fight at MSG. This, seconds after Joshua dropped him. High drama at the Mecca.” Once I saw that, I knew I couldn’t miss out.

I threw caution, caution to pay data overage charges that is, to the wind, and tuned in. I saw the first knockdown and the second one. I started to pace around the bus station. All of the sudden, I didn’t care that a bus wasn’t coming. All that was on my mind was that a -1200 underdog was about to capture world titles. And he did. All of the sudden my thoughts on the way home turned from “what should I order on my pizza when I get home” to “what did I just witness?”

MMA

RIZIN 16 was a fun show to watch. It got tiring when a ton of the bouts went to decision, but I still had fun. My favourite bout was of Taiju Shiratori’s kickboxing clinic. My least favourite was Nakamura versus Topnoi Tiger, as it had so much potential but did not deliver. I enjoy these kickboxing oriented shows that RIZIN does every once in a while. If we’re talking purely favourite moments on the show, my two favourites would easily be Jake Heun’s Guardians of the Galaxy themed walkout and Uoi Fullswing’s last-minute victory.

The end of RIZIN has me wanting the trilogy fight between Seo Hee Ham and Ayaka Hamasaki. For the longest time I’ve wanted Seo Hee Ham to collaborate with RIZIN, as she is easily the biggest Atomweight fighter outside of the promotion. Since she was present at the show and incorporated in it’s presentation let’s hope she’ll be seen soon in the ring.

I thought the presentation of the upcoming bouts went well at RIZIN. Yusuke Yachi and Mikuru Asakura (but mostly Mikuru) did a great job hyping their fight. Mikuru’s personality is quite the entertaining one, saying after his Lightweight fight he is not going to be in the Lightweight GP, but instead wants a Featherweight GP and a Saitama Super Arena main event bout (credit to MikeLovesTacosX on Twitter for the translation).

This coming weekend should be a fun one. Equally explosive fighters Marlon Moraes and Henry Cejudo are finally colliding. Along with that fight is also huge match-ups in Valentina Shevchenko versus Jessica Eye and Tony Ferguson versus Donald Cerrone. Those three fights make it a pretty well put together card.

This Week on The Site and Beyond!

This week will be a very busy one for me. Due to many things, I’ll be busy essentially every evening until Friday. But with that being said, I’ll try to get out the usual Produce X 101 article, and I will try to cover UFC 238. I’ve made a hub for MMA articles on the site, with the link being www.jackwannan.com/mma. If you’re interested in the MMA articles, give it a look.

Anthony Joshua Gets Stoppage Alexander Povetkin In The Seventh Round

It was a return to his old self for Anthony Joshua when he closed out his bout against Alexander Povetkin on Saturday. After getting a decision win for the first time earlier this year against Joseph Parker, Joshua was able to finish Povetkin at Wembley. This was Joshua’s third time fighting at the 90,000 capacity venue, last time was when he defeated Wladimir Klitschko in early 2017.

On my personal scorecard the first two rounds went to Povetkin. Joshua wasn’t showing any aggression while Povetkin already looked comfortable. While Povetkin definitely stayed active it was Joshua who took round three and four. Round five was a bit of a bump in the road with Povetkin winning it on my scoresheet. It was tied going into round seven, but because of the result none of this mattered.

In round 7 Joshua started to repeatedly rock Povetkin with strikes. The first time he fell was from a right hook. He had immense trouble standing back up, with half of his torso being out of the ring at one point. It would have been completely justifiable to end the fight here. The ref gave him another chance, only to be floored once again seconds later. Anthony Joshua stays undefeated coming out of the Wembley fight, and definitely stays on many people’s Pound For Pound lists.

My Scoresheet:

Fighter	R1	R2	R3	R4	R5	R6	R7	R8	R9	R10	R11	R12	Total
Joshua	9	9	10	10	9	10	W
Povetkin	10	10	9	9	10	9	L