Andy Ruiz Jr thrashed Anthony Joshua’s punching machine score in 2019

It is 2022 and Anthony Joshua’s defeat to Andy Ruiz Jr. still feels very fresh.

Thanks, in part, to an outclassing at the hands of Oleksandr Usyk at the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium last year.

After all, it was only the second defeat of the Englishman’s career and it brought back memories of the only other occasion when he was found wanting.

At the time, most were of the opinion that it was a classic case of a fighter at the top of his game underestimating another. Joshua may well have been insouciant but we will never know.

If he was, though, then he shouldn’t have been, given what had happened in a certain punching machine challenge on the Graham Norton show. Where Joshua scored 848, Ruiz Jr. breezed past it, nearly touching four figures with a score of 967. 

For those who wondered as to how he got such a score, he gave a live demonstration in New York, taking Joshua out with a world-class display.

It felt as if Ruiz was an artist and Joshua his amanuensis, when, in all honesty, most of us thought it was the other way around.

Anthony Joshua: 848 on the punching machine