Andy Ruiz Jr has already provided boxing with one of the clearest demonstrations of what natural talent can achieve.
Unfortunately, his career has also provided an equally powerful demonstration of why talent alone is not enough.
Ruiz’s recent defeat to Damian Knyba inevitably restarted the conversation about what has happened to the man who stunned Anthony Joshua and became unified heavyweight champion in 2019.
I have already written about whether Ruiz losing to Knyba should really have been considered such a major upset:
But Ruiz is really only the starting point for a much bigger discussion.
Because there is an enormous difference between being talented enough to become a professional boxer and actually living the boxer lifestyle required to remain successful.
A fighter might spend 36 minutes boxing on a Saturday night.
Being a boxer occupies the other 364 days of the year.
Andy Ruiz Jr Showed Us What Happens When Talent Isn’t Enough
There is no need to speculate about what went wrong after Ruiz defeated Joshua.
Ruiz has told us himself.
After winning the WBA, IBF and WBO heavyweight titles at Madison Square Garden in June 2019, his life changed almost overnight. The celebrations followed, training suffered and Ruiz later admitted that partying and gaining too much weight contributed to his defeat when Joshua reclaimed the titles six months later.
That matters because Ruiz was not exposed as somebody who wasn’t talented enough to compete at world level.
He had already proved the exact opposite.
He had beaten Anthony Joshua.
Ruiz possesses remarkably quick hands for a heavyweight, excellent combinations and the ability to fight effectively at close range. Those abilities didn’t suddenly disappear because somebody wrapped world championship belts around his waist.
What changed was everything surrounding them.
Even years later, Ruiz has continued talking about discipline. Before returning against Knyba, he had reduced his weight considerably after reportedly reaching around 300lbs during his inactivity.
He entered the fight in dramatically better physical condition.
But there is a problem.
You cannot recover lost years.
And that is perhaps the greatest lesson the boxer lifestyle teaches us.
Training Camp Shouldn’t Be About Getting Fit
There is an expression we hear constantly in boxing.
A fighter has “gone into camp”.
That usually means eight, ten or perhaps twelve weeks of increasingly intense preparation before a fight.
But what exactly should training camp be for?
Ideally, it shouldn’t be where a boxer begins getting fit.
A professional fighter should already have a strong level of conditioning before camp starts.
Camp should be about becoming fight fit.
There is a difference.
It should be about preparing specifically for an opponent. Sparring against fighters who can replicate certain styles. Developing tactics. Sharpening reactions. Increasing intensity. Working on particular combinations and making relatively small adjustments to weight.
If the first several weeks are instead spent trying to undo everything that happened during the previous three months, part of that camp has already been wasted.
That doesn’t mean boxers shouldn’t have holidays.
It doesn’t mean they should never drink alcohol, eat unhealthy food or enjoy themselves.
They are human beings, not machines.
But there is a difference between allowing your body to recover after a fight and effectively abandoning the boxer lifestyle until somebody phones with another date.
The best professionals understand that difference.
Floyd Mayweather Never Stopped Being a Boxer
Floyd Mayweather is an interesting example because nobody would describe his wider lifestyle as understated.
The cars, jewellery, private jets, parties and enormous displays of wealth became part of the Mayweather brand.
But underneath all of that was an obsessive athlete.
Mayweather was renowned for training at unconventional hours and maintaining himself between fights. Whatever anybody thinks about his personality, matchmaking or the way the latter stages of his career were managed, his dedication to conditioning was extraordinary.
That is easily overlooked because Mayweather made boxing appear so effortless.
It wasn’t.
The reflexes, movement, stamina and concentration that allowed him to control fights into his late thirties were not simply gifts he received at birth.
Talent gave Mayweather an extraordinary starting point.
The boxer lifestyle allowed him to maximise it.
There is an important distinction.
Carl Froch Understood Longevity
Carl Froch provides another excellent example.
Froch fought professionally for more than a decade and remained at super-middleweight throughout his career.
That alone tells you something.
Making 168lbs repeatedly while competing at world level into your mid-thirties requires considerably more than surviving a diet during fight week.
Froch has spoken about the importance of clean living outside training camps and how that contributed to his longevity.
And look at the latter stages of his career.
Lucian Bute. Mikkel Kessler. George Groves twice.
Froch wasn’t desperately trying to hang around against progressively weaker opposition.
He was competing in major world championship fights until the end.
His final professional appearance came against Groves at Wembley Stadium in 2014, when Froch was 36.
That is what looking after yourself can buy a fighter.
Not immortality.
Time.
And in boxing, time is incredibly valuable.
Johnny Nelson Is Another Example Worth Remembering
Johnny Nelson’s career is particularly interesting because his success arrived relatively late.
His professional record contains defeats that would probably cause some modern prospects to be written off completely.
Yet Nelson continued learning, developing and maintaining himself until eventually becoming WBO cruiserweight champion.
He held that title for years and remained champion into his late thirties.
There is something important in that story.
Not every boxer reaches their peak at 24.
Some need experience. Some require tactical maturity. Some simply take longer to discover what type of fighter they really are.
But you only get the opportunity to discover those things if your body remains capable of doing the job.
Living the boxer lifestyle gives talent time to develop.
Canelo Álvarez Has Been Doing This for Years
Canelo Álvarez turned professional extraordinarily young and has effectively spent his adult life operating inside professional boxing.
Think about the mileage involved.
Think about the number of training camps.
Then consider the different divisions.
Canelo has won world titles from light-middleweight through to light-heavyweight and became undisputed champion at super-middleweight.
Moving through divisions obviously means deliberately adding size, but there is a huge difference between building your body for another weight class and simply becoming badly out of condition between fights.
Canelo has spent years competing against elite opposition while keeping his body capable of surviving that workload.
Again, talent matters enormously.
But talent needs maintaining.
A Ferrari isn’t much use if you never service the engine.
Ricky Hatton Proved You Can Get Away With It – Until You Can’t
Ricky Hatton makes this argument far more complicated.
Because Hatton did virtually everything I’m arguing against here and still became an outstanding fighter.
His weight fluctuations between fights became legendary.
Hatton would enjoy himself after contests, gain considerable weight and then enter long, punishing training camps designed partly to transform him back into a light-welterweight.
At times he was reportedly 35 or 40lbs above fighting weight when preparations began. Hatton himself later acknowledged that he sometimes gained even more than that.
And yet look at what he achieved.
He beat Kostya Tszyu.
He became a two-weight world champion.
He filled arenas, took enormous travelling support to Las Vegas and became one of the most popular British fighters of his generation.
So clearly his approach worked.
Until eventually it didn’t.
Hatton himself later expressed regret about what he put his body through between fights.
That doesn’t diminish anything he accomplished.
It makes the question more fascinating.
What might Ricky Hatton have achieved if every training camp had started with an already-conditioned Ricky Hatton?
Maybe nothing changes.
Maybe he still loses to Floyd Mayweather and Manny Pacquiao, two genuinely exceptional fighters.
But perhaps the years of repeatedly ballooning in weight and then dragging himself back down eventually took something from him.
We’ll never know.
That’s the frustrating part.
Naseem Hamed Might Be the Greatest What-If of All
Prince Naseem Hamed is another fighter who makes this conversation impossible to reduce to simple rules.
At his best, Hamed possessed ridiculous natural ability.
Power.
Reflexes.
Speed.
Timing.
Unorthodox movement.
Confidence bordering on complete disregard for conventional boxing technique.
There has never really been another British fighter quite like him.
Hamed became a dominant featherweight champion and one of boxing’s biggest personalities.
But as his career progressed, there was a sense that some of the hunger and discipline that helped create the young Prince had disappeared.
His relationship with Brendan Ingle ended. His training changed. His weight became more difficult to manage and the fighter who once appeared obsessed with proving himself no longer seemed quite as consumed by boxing.
Then came Marco Antonio Barrera.
Hamed lost for the first time professionally in 2001, returned once the following year and never fought again.
He was only 28.
Again, this isn’t about pretending Hamed somehow failed.
He didn’t.
He had already achieved more before turning 30 than almost every professional boxer ever will.
The more interesting question is what was left behind.
How good could Naseem Hamed have been if the discipline had always matched the talent?
We will never know.
Natural Ability Can Become a Curse
There is perhaps another element to this.
Sometimes extraordinary talent allows fighters to develop bad habits because they can get away with them.
If you are faster, stronger, more powerful or simply more naturally gifted than almost everybody you face while developing, why change?
You keep winning.
Then you become champion.
You earn money.
Everybody tells you how brilliant you are.
The consequences haven’t arrived yet.
That can create the illusion that the rules don’t apply to you.
Until eventually you meet somebody talented enough to make those small disadvantages matter.
Or you get older.
Or your reflexes slow slightly.
Or your body stops losing weight as easily.
Suddenly, the margins become much smaller.
The boxer lifestyle is partly about making sure those margins remain in your favour for as long as possible.
Boxing Is One of the Few Sports You Can Never Completely Leave
Professional footballers have an off-season.
Formula One has an off-season.
Many sports provide clearly defined periods where athletes can physically and mentally escape.
Boxing doesn’t really work like that.
There might not be a fight booked.
There might not even be a training camp planned.
But the next phone call can change everything.
A world title opportunity might appear unexpectedly.
An opponent might withdraw.
A promoter might offer a fight on six weeks’ notice.
The boxer who has remained reasonably fit can say yes.
The boxer who needs two months simply to resemble an athlete again cannot.
That doesn’t mean living inside a gym every day of the year.
Rest is part of being an elite athlete too.
But maintaining a basic level of conditioning, controlling weight and remaining mentally connected to the sport can determine which opportunities are possible.
Sometimes careers turn on those opportunities.
The Boxer Lifestyle Is Ultimately About Respecting Time
Boxing careers are incredibly short.
That is why Ruiz’s story feels so frustrating.
In 2019, he was 29 years old and had just produced one of the biggest heavyweight upsets in boxing history.
Seven years later, at 36, he is trying to rebuild again after losing to Damian Knyba.
There are no refunds available for those years.
You cannot ask boxing to give you your physical prime back because you finally understand how valuable it was.
And that is why living the boxer lifestyle matters.
It isn’t about pretending fighters shouldn’t have lives.
It isn’t about expecting somebody to spend Christmas Day running ten miles because they might fight in April.
It is about understanding what being a professional athlete actually means.
Floyd Mayweather understood it.
Carl Froch understood it.
Johnny Nelson understood it.
Canelo Álvarez has understood it.
Ricky Hatton got away with fighting against it for an extraordinary length of time.
Naseem Hamed was talented enough to achieve greatness without us ever discovering exactly how great he might have become.
And Andy Ruiz Jr might ultimately become one of the clearest examples of all.
Because boxing history is full of talented fighters.
Talent gets you through the gym door.
Talent might even make you world champion.
But if you want to discover exactly how good you can become, eventually you have to live the life.
What Do You Think?
How important is the boxer lifestyle between fights? Are fighters such as Ricky Hatton and Naseem Hamed examples of careers that could have achieved even more with greater year-round discipline, or does their success prove there is no single way to manage a boxing career?
Share the article with another boxing fan and let me know where you stand.
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