Polish heavyweight Damian Knyba produced a sensational performance in the main event of the Matchroom Boxing card promoted by Eddie Hearn at the Prudential Center in Newark, New Jersey, bringing an end to Andy Ruiz’s dream of returning to the top of the heavyweight division. Knyba dominated the fight from start to finish and came away with the victory despite the referee preventing him from scoring a knockout and despite two judges bending over backwards to help his opponent. In the end, the Pole was declared the winner by unanimous decision with scores of 117–110, 114–113 and 114–113.
Knyba’s extremely conservative approach at the start allowed Ruiz to narrowly take the opening round, although the fighter of Mexican heritage did little of note himself, merely holding the center of the ring and applying some tentative pressure, occasionally mixing in a left jab to the body.
Encouraged by his opponent’s lethargic approach, the towering Polish fighter began to establish his game plan from the second round onward, increasing the volume of his range-finding punches and skillfully exploiting his considerable reach advantage.
Unable to find a way past his opponent’s extraordinarily long arms, with Knyba also moving well on his feet to consistently maintain long range, Ruiz was forced to surge forward with greater urgency and aggression. However, the change in approach he adopted from the fourth round onward failed to produce the desired results.
Despite trying to attack his opponent with determination, “The Destroyer” consistently mistimed his entries, misjudged the distance and made Knyba’s job easier, allowing the Pole to beat him to the punch, make him miss and tie him up at close quarters. Ruiz’s only partial success came with his wide right hook, but he was landing it from too close a range for it to have devastating effects.
At the beginning of the sixth round, Knyba felt so much in control that he took a few unnecessary risks and was caught by a hook to the face that opened a small cut near his left eye. The setback, however, did not unsettle him.
On the contrary, the Pole came within a whisker of a spectacular knockout victory in the following round, when a devastating right hand stunned Ruiz and left him at the mercy of the combinations that followed. Seeing “The Destroyer” being peppered with punches and offering only passive resistance, referee David Franciosi rushed between the two fighters with the very clear intention of stopping the contest, but at that exact moment Ruiz collapsed to the canvas.
At that point, the referee suddenly changed his mind and began a count. As if that were not enough, he also gave the Matchroom fighter an extraordinarily long time before allowing the action to resume — a full 23 seconds elapsed between Ruiz hitting the canvas and the command “Box!” — thereby helping him make it to the end of the round and benefit from the one-minute break.
Knyba did not allow himself to become frustrated by the injustice and landed more heavy shots at the start of the eighth round. Then, realizing that his opponent had fully regained his senses and that the knockout was no longer within immediate reach, he went back to relying on his disciplined out-fighting.
The Pole, presumably convinced that he held a commanding lead on the scorecards, gave a little ground in the ninth round and limited himself mainly to containing Ruiz. He then wisely returned to using his long-range punches over the final three rounds, preventing Ruiz from mounting any kind of late siege.
The knowledge that he needed to look for a knockout punch was not enough to bring “The Destroyer” back to life: his offensive efforts remained sporadic, inconclusive and ineffective until the final bell, and the reading of the verdict should have been a mere formality confirming the Polish fighter’s dominance. This writer scored the fight 118–109 in Knyba’s favor.
Incredibly, Glenn Feldman and Kevin Morgan awarded Knyba a margin of just one point, effectively giving him the victory only because of the knockdown. It is an interpretation of the fight that we strongly reject and have no hesitation in describing as shamefully favorable to the promoter of the event. Fortunately, those two dreadful scorecards did not alter the final outcome, but that should not lead us to ignore what happened, because conduct of this kind undermines the very credibility of boxing and must be firmly condemned.
Turning back to the technical aspects of the fight, it must be noted that Andy Ruiz, despite being in respectable physical condition by his standards, paid a heavy price for his inactivity in recent years. His timing, ability to counter and reactions were glaringly absent, and against a tall, mobile fighter who knows how to make effective use of straight punches, that proved to be an enormous problem.
Knyba deserves great credit for displaying excellent conditioning and executing his tactical game plan to perfection, proving himself stronger not only than Ruiz, but also than the referee and the judges who worked against him. This victory will very likely open the door to further opportunities and more lucrative purses.