Andy Ruiz Jr. Biography

Andy Ruiz Jr was born as Andrés Ponce Ruiz Jr. on 11th September 1989 in Imperial, California, U.S.

His parents had shifted from Mexico to the United States. His father, Andy Sr, was a construction worker who later began his own business of flipping houses. His mother’s name is Felicitas Ruiz. His grandfather was an owner of a boxing gym in Mexicali.

As a young child, Andy Ruiz Jr was always breaking and destroying things around him. This made his family call him the Destroyer.

As a kid, he was also more into baseball; however, his father diverted his attention towards boxing. He first stepped into a boxing gym when he was around six years old and trained for an entire year before making his debut in his first match in San Diego, California.

For his education, he went to Imperial High School and graduated from there in 2007.

Before taking up boxing as a full-time career, he was involved in his father’s business for some time.

Andy Ruiz Jr started his amateur career boxing in Mexico under the guidance of Cuban trainer Fernando Ferrer and went on to achieve a 105–5 win-loss record. He bagged two gold medals at the Mexican National Junior Olympics and also claimed the Ringside World Championships.

In 2008, as part of the Mexican squad, he participated in the Beijing Olympic Games qualification tournaments; however, he lost out in two matches – first to Robert Alfonso and then to Oscar Rivas.

On 28 March 2009, at the age 19, he made his professional debut against Miguel Salvador Ramirez. In the match, which was held at Plaza de Toros in Tijuana (Baja California, Mexico), he won via a first-round knockout.

Three months later, he defeated Ross Brantley via a technical knockout and recorded his second win. In February the following year, in his third match (against Juan Luis Lopez Alcaraz), he once again emerged victorious via a unanimous decision. Both bouts took place in Mexico.

In March 2010, just a month later, he made his U.S. Pro debut and defeated Luke Vaughn via a knockout.

His winning streak continued in the next 25 matches till September 2016. In these matches, he defeated Francisco Diaz, Matthew Greer, Maurenzo Smith and Kelsey Arnold via a knockout and Josh Gormley, Kenny Lemos, Manuel Quezada, Joe Hanks, Carl Davis, Elijah McCall, Jonte Willis, Ken Frank, Villi Bloomfield and Miles Kelly via a technical knockout.

He won the bouts against Raymond Lopez, Alvaro Morales, Angel Herrera, Theron Johnson Homero Fonseca, Siarhei Liakhovich, Joell Godfrey, Raphael Zumbano and Franklin Lawrence through a unanimous decision. He was declared a winner in his bouts against Ray Austin and Tor Hamer via RTD.

In emerging victorious in his match against Joe Hanks (July 2013), he claimed the vacant WBO Inter-Continental heavyweight title. Four months later, he successfully defended his title in his match against Tor Hamer.

With his win in the latter match, he also bagged the WBC-NABF heavyweight title. He retained both his titles by defeating Manuel Quezada and Siarhei Liakhovich in May and December 2014 respectively.

He also retained his WBC-NABF heavyweight title by defeating Joell Godfrey (September 2015), Ray Austin (May 2016) and Franklin Lawrence (September 2016).

After his straight 29 victories, Andy Ruiz Jr lost his 30th match against Joseph Parker by a majority decision in December 2016. He was fighting for the vacant WBO World Heavyweight Championship.

He resumed his winning spree in the next bout against Devin Vargas (via knockout, March 2018) and later beat Kevin Johnson (via unanimous decision, July 2018) and Alexander Dimitrenko (via RTD, April 2019).

With the last match he made his Premier Boxing Champions debut with his fights being aired on Showtime and FOX.  Earlier, he was associated with the boxing promotional company Top Rank.

The high point of his career came when he stunned the boxing world by defeating (by technical knockout) the British boxer Anthony Joshua to claim the unified WBA (Super), IBF, WBO and IBO heavyweight titles in June 2019. With this, he became the first Mexican-American heavyweight champion in the boxing history ever and second Hispanic heavyweight champion after John Ruiz.

However, in December the same year, in a rematch with Anthony Joshua, he failed to defend his titles when the latter defeated him via a unanimous decision.

In May 2021 he defeated, via unanimous decision, the former WBC title challenger Chris Arreola on Fox PPV match.

He is next scheduled to fight the Cuban professional boxer Luis Ortiz in August 2022.

Andy Ruiz Jr is married to his long-time girlfriend Julie Ruiz and the couple has five children – three sons: including Andy Ruiz III, William and Richie Ruiz, and two daughters: named Bella Ruiz and Beverly Ruiz.

He identifies himself as Mexican American and can fluently speak both English and Spanish.