Teddy Atlas sees a path for Damian Knyba to upset Andy Ruiz Jr. on Friday, and he is not dismissing the size, reach and legs of the Polish heavyweight as the fight nears at Prudential Center in Newark, New Jersey. Atlas called Knyba a live underdog and said there is enough of a window for him to box from the outside and make the former unified champion work.
That matters because Ruiz is back under a bright light for the first time in a long while. He stepped on the scale at 254.3 pounds on Thursday, his lowest official reading since 2018, and 20.1 pounds lighter than the 274.4 pounds he carried into the ring against Jarrell Miller. For a fighter who had been idle for nearly two years and admitted ballooning near 300 pounds during that stretch, the number is being read as more than a weigh-in figure. It is a test of whether a smaller Ruiz can also be a sharper one.
The search for that answer begins with what Ruiz has and has not done since his stunning stoppage of Anthony Joshua in June 2019. He briefly held the heavyweight division’s attention, then let that momentum slip, dropped the titles, sat out 17 months before meeting Chris Arreola and later collected pay-per-view main-event money against Chris Arreola and Luis Ortiz while the calendar stayed quiet. Four straight outings after the Joshua win have failed to produce the kind of commanding statement that once made him must-watch.
Atlas still says Ruiz is the better technician. He just does not trust the rest of the package. The concern is simple: the hands, timing and inside craft remain, but the appetite and the recent form have not inspired confidence. That is why he sees opportunity for Knyba to use reach, height and movement, and why he would not back Ruiz quickly even if the former champion has the cleaner boxing resume.
Ruiz’s own history is the reason this fight still feels unfinished. He has already shown he can shock the heavyweight division, and he also showed how fast that edge can fade when conditioning slips. He suffered a three-round stoppage against Agit Kabayel in January, while Knyba arrives off a three-round stoppage loss of his own in January to Kabayel, which leaves both men with something to prove and one of them with far more to lose if the scale and the ring do not match. On Friday, at Prudential Center, the question is not whether Ruiz can still fight. It is whether he can do it long enough to keep Knyba from turning Atlas’s read into an upset call that lands.
