Andy Ruiz Jr. came back to boxing on Friday in Newark, New Jersey, and the 36-year-old former heavyweight champion did it after more than two years away from the ring. He met Damian Knyba in the main event of The Fight at Prudential Center, a 12-round bout carried by TNT and truTV and streamed on DAZN for international viewers.
The draw for this one was simple: Ruiz was back. He entered at 35-2-1 with 22 knockouts, while Knyba brought a 17-1 record and 11 knockouts into a matchup that paired Ruiz’s experience with a younger heavyweight who had stayed closer to competition. For readers tracking Ruiz’s return, the search begins here because this was his first fight since a majority draw against Jarrell Miller in Los Ángeles in August 2024, and the layoff before that had stretched long enough to raise real questions about where he fit in the division now.
The numbers at Thursday’s weigh-in showed why the comeback mattered. Ruiz came in at 254.3 pounds, far below the around 300 pounds he carried during his inactivity. That drop did not happen by accident. He was working again with Manny Robles, the trainer who also guided him during the 2019 upset of Anthony Joshua, and the preparation was built around getting Ruiz back to a shape that could hold up over 12 rounds.
Knyba, who weighed 255.5 pounds, was no small obstacle. At 6 feet 7 inches, he stood five inches taller than Ruiz and came in with the edge of recent activity, even after his January loss to Agit Kabayel in Germany in a third-round stoppage for the interim WBC title. He is based in New Jersey and trains there, which made the setting familiar, while Ruiz was the fighter trying to prove that time away had not pulled him too far from the top of the heavyweight division.
That is where the night left the bigger question. Ruiz had trimmed down and returned with Robles beside him, but a comeback fight is only a beginning, not an answer. The real test is whether the weight loss, the work and the long layoff can be translated into the kind of performance that turns a return date into a new run.
