Yet he was once 'the choir boy’, an altar boy raised with his three siblings by a single mother in Massachusetts. Ruiz insisted his Spartan upbringing led to an anger inside him which has seen him impervious to age in the division.
David Haye aims to address that at the MEN Arena with rugged youth and dangerous speed. Ruiz, 38, possesses a ring resume which reads like a Who’s Who of heavyweights – good, bad and indifferent – from the last fifteen years.
Among them, Evander Holyfield (three meetings – win, lose, draw), Nikolai Valuev (twice – both losses), James Toney, Hasim Rahman – one of only two rivals to beat Lennox Lewis
– and Roy Jones Jnr. Champions all. Yet the stifling style employed by Ruiz has enabled the canny character to survive against top-class opposition, ten of whom have been world champions. This is his eleventh world title contest.
But frank revelations came from Ruiz as he admitted that his enduring fighting spirit comes from his mother, Gladys Martinez Morales, “a lady but a fighter” who held down three jobs to raise her young Puerto Rican family with dignity. Yet the family’s treatment in the US left Ruiz with an anger he uses even today.
“My mother did what she could to put food on the table, worked in the fish market, held down three jobs, raised us on her own, and had a fighting spirit.
"She taught us discipline and gave us pride and made us special,” said Ruiz after a workout on Wednesday. He looked lean, and will come into the ring at around 225lbs.
“Anger has been a part of my life, stuff that has happened in my life, I control it and come fight time I go out there and unleash it,” he said.
Ruiz, who has a 44-8-1 record, but has lost three of his last six contests, has held the WBA crown twice. Two of those last three bouts were against 7ft Russian man-mountain Valuev.
Both of those contests, were lost, marginally, on points. Haye, once the undisputed world cruiserweight champion, has had only three heavyweight contests.
David Haye v John Ruiz is live in HD on Sky Box Office on Saturday night
Source: telegraph.co.uk
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