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Ruiz stares across the ring into a daunting stylistic chasm, giving up nearly half a foot in height and a foot in reach. Yet, it’s exactly this physical disparity that will set up Knyba’s downfall, as Ruiz’s signature counter-punching is perfectly engineered to chop down the taller Pole.

At first glance, the physical disparity looks daunting. Ruiz stands only 6’2”, while Knyba possesses the prototypical Eastern European super-heavyweights who have populated the division for the past two decades. But heavyweight boxing has never been a bodybuilding contest, and Ruiz‘s amateur pedigree, experience, and quick hands do not bode well for Knyba.

Damian “Polish Hussar” Knyba should not be dismissed simply because of his limited professional résumé. The sobriquet invokes Poland’s legendary Winged Hussars, the elite heavy cavalry whose enormous feathered wings made their charging silhouettes unmistakable on European battlefields. Knyba has embraced the history literally, entering the ring dressed as a Polish Hussar with the distinctive wings rising behind him and accompanied by men dressed as Polish knights. The native of Bydgoszcz, Poland, compiled a 23-7 amateur record, won the Polish Youth Championship in 2019 and the Polish Senior Championship in 2020. More importantly for Friday night, Knyba wields a long, effective jab and knows how to effectively use his reach advantage.

“Show Me a Tall Man With a Good Jab, and I’ll Show You a Hard Man to Beat.” — George Foreman

Many fighters who square off against a taller man talk a big game, then quickly learn that what George Foreman stated during Wladimir Klitschko’s bout against Sam Peter — “show me a tall man with a good jab, and I’ll show you a hard man to beat” — is compelling distilled wisdom.

Knyba has the tools to prove Foreman’s axiom again Friday night. No fighter can afford to spend round after round trying to crack the code of getting past a 6’7” heavyweight’s guard and escaping an 86-inch jab, not to mention the left hook and straight right hand that loom behind it.

If Knyba establishes that jab early and keeps Ruiz at the end of it, he stands a legitimate chance to win this fight. The jab remains the most important punch in boxing. It controls distance, disrupts rhythm and forces the shorter fighter to pay a toll every time he tries to get close enough to throw his own heavy artillery.

The problem Knyba faces is that we already know what can occur when an experienced, compact heavyweight cracks that code.

Blueprint for a Ruiz Victory: Kabayel v. Knyba

Agit Kabayel may already have provided Ruiz with a formula for stoppage. The undefeated 6’3” German heavyweight sports a 27-0 record with 19 knockouts and now reigns as WBC heavyweight champion. A former two-time European champion, Kabayel has built his reputation through relentless pressure, punishing body work and a particularly impressive recent string of stoppages.

Knyba faced Kabayel only seven months ago in Germany. Knyba initially looked impressive. He used his height and reach, landed his jab and connected with enough clean punches to damage Kabayel around the right eye.

The indefatigable 6’3” Kabayel, however, kept coming. Once Kabayel breached Knyba’s defensive perimeter, he dramatically altered the the complexion of the bout. Kabayel began landing hard right hands to the head and vicious body blows. In the third round, a right hand badly hurt Knyba. His legs buckled, Sensing a breach in his quarry’s defenses, Kabayel unleashed a savage visceral assault that forced a standing intervention.

Some thought, the referee prematurely halted the fight. Even if it was, the more vital truth lies in the unraveling preceding the stoppage. The moment Kabayel hurt him, Knyba froze, devoid of answers to the tactical riddle before him. His immense geometric advantages became irrelevant the second Kabayel brought the fight to close quarters.

That fight may provide the blueprint for Ruiz. Kabayel is an excellent heavyweight. He owns a solid amateur background, possesses considerable skill and has developed into one of the division’s best pressure fighters. But Kabayel is no Ivan Drago. He is a relatively stocky heavyweight who succeeds through skill, strength, pressure and experience.

Sounds familiar. Ruiz presents many of the same spatial hurdles for Knyba, but wields a lethal equalizer: remarkable hand speed. When Ruiz gets into punching range, he can fire three, four and five punches while larger men are still trying to reset.

Ruiz Has Already Solved a Much Bigger Problem: Anthony Joshua

Anthony Joshua stood 6’6”, weighed 247¾ pounds and entered his first fight against Ruiz as an undefeated Olympic gold medalist and unified heavyweight champion. Joshua‘s record stood at 22-0 with 21 KOs, and he possessed superior amateur and professional accomplishments than Knyba has today.

Then Ruiz chopped Joshua down. Ruiz attacked Joshua’s body and chest, worked his way inside the taller man’s reach and forced Joshua to fight at a distance that favored Ruiz’s shorter arms and faster combinations. Even after Joshua floored Ruiz hard in the third round. Ruiz got up, hurt Joshua moments later and transformed the fight. By the seventh round, the undefeated heavyweight champion had been knocked down four times and the fight was over.

Ruiz remembers the lesson, called himself a “giant slayer” and said trainer Manny Robles has been reminding him what it took to beat Joshua. Ruiz has already proven height and reach advantages do not faze him.

Ruiz’s physical condition presents an intriguing matchup Friday. Ruiz weighed 254.3 pounds Thursday, his lightest weight since 2018. Knyba weighed 255.5. The 6’2” Ruiz and 6’7” Knyba enter the ring separated by barely a pound despite radically different physiques.

Ruiz weighed 268 for his first fight against Joshua and an absurd 283½ for the rematch six months later, when an undisciplined Ruiz surrendered his titles without reproducing anything resembling his performance in the first fight. At 254.3, he appears to have taken the task of dismantling his taller opponent seriously.

Ruiz is now 36 years old, has fought only sporadically during the past couple of years, and may no longer wield the same speed he had in 2019 when he shocked Joshua. But this is the heavyweight division: fighters frequently remain lethal beyond the age when smaller fighters begin to lose their physical advantages, and Ruiz does not need to reproduce the finest performance of his career to beat Knyba. He just needs to get inside.

Knyba will likely demonstrate some early success with his legitimate job and reach advantage. Kabayel had difficulty with him during portions of their opening exchanges—but demonstrated that Knyba can be cleanly hit once a shorter heavyweight gets underneath the jab. Critically, Kabayel showed that Knyba has not yet deciphered how to respond when a skilled, experienced heavyweight gets through his enormous reach and forces him to fight under duress.

Ruiz arguably presents more danger in exactly that situation. His hands are faster than Kabayel’s, he punches hard and has already solved a vastly more formidable version of the same physical puzzle against Joshua.

Ruiz by knockout in the second or third round.