Punching the time clock

At age 36, heavyweight Ruiz still loves his job - and he's eyeing another title

CANCUN, Mexico - Known as the Quiet Man, John Ruiz is now more like Señor Chatterbox.

"I feel like this is my last hurrah," said the former two-time World Boxing Association heavyweight champion and former Chelsea, Mass., resident. "You're going to see a new Ruiz, more aggressive."

With the heavyweight division at an all-time low, Ruiz believes he's just one fight away from a third championship.

Tomorrow he'll be on the undercard for the "History in Cancun" - which pits interim World Boxing Council champion Samuel Peter vs. WBC champion Oleg Maskaev, the first heavyweight title fight held in Mexico. Ruiz (42-7-1 29 KOs), ranked No. 3 by the WBA and No. 6 by the WBC, meets Jameel "Big Time" McCline (38-8-3, 23 KOs).

It's his first time fighting in Latin America, and the only Hispanic heavyweight champion in history feels at home. Sort of.

"You take a picture of me by the pool, it looks like I've been drinking piña coladas and looking at bikinis," he tells the photographer as he shadowboxes with the turquoise waters lapping against the shore. "I've been working hard in the gym. Twice as hard as I usually train."

Ruiz works in the ring for two hours, gets pounded by a medicine ball in the gut, hits the bags, then does his roadwork at night after the fiery Mexican sun goes down. Ruiz runs on the main road. Students on spring break think he's a bouncer at Señor Frog's, a popular local drinking hole.

With a relatively new trainer, Manny Siaca, pushing him hard and a new attitude, Ruiz wants to win back the media and the fans who say he's boring. Too much jab and grab, too little action. Even Ruiz acknowledges it.

"I heard it," he said with a smile. "For me at the time, it was what I needed to do to win the fight. It worked at those times. I'm going to get away from the Ruiz they know."

The bout will be fought at a bullring, Plaza de Toros de Cancun, and, said Ruiz, "I'm going to be like a bull running into the ring."

Told the bull never wins, Ruiz laughs. Make that the matador, he said.

"I'm not going to end up like a bull with a bunch of swords in my back. Avoid the punches is the best way to do it."

Ruiz promises to slug it out with McCline "nonstop" in the HBO bout. "I'm working hard so we'll see [tomorrow] night what the world thinks."

McCline knocked down Peter three times but still lost a unanimous decision last October.

'This fight will say it all'

Ruiz has slipped off the radar screen of most boxing fans. But he's a proud man. Unlike some champions, he's never ducked a worthy opponent.

"I basically fought everybody," he said.

And now, with no dominating heavyweight fighter around, Ruiz thinks he can "clean up" the fractured heavyweight division, even at the ripe boxing age of 36.

"I wouldn't be in this sport if I didn't think so," he said. "If everything works out great, it could be a couple of months or a year. But this fight is the most important fight right now.

"Definitely, I feel like I'm the best one out there. There's no one new out there that can say they can beat me. But my main focus is on Jameel. I feel this fight will say it all."

In Ruiz's last fight, in October, he scored an easy TKO over Otis Tisdale in the second round in Chicago.

"The last fight was a little nerve-racking for me because it had been a while for me," he said. "I trained hard and I made sure I threw a lot more punches."

He retired in 2005 when he lost to James Toney, but came back 10 days later when Toney failed a steroid test. He lost the title to 7-foot, 324-pound Nikolay Valuev in December 2005, a controversial decision that had the Berlin crowd booing. In 2006, he lost a split decision against Ruslan Chagaev in Dusseldorf, Germany.

"There were times when I didn't get that close decision. They took the fight away from me," he said.

But Ruiz isn't whining.

Arriving early for a Don King marathon press conference, Ruiz stands in the back of the Royal Cancun ballroom alone. He's no longer the main draw.

"That doesn't bother me," he said. "I've been through it all. It's something I'm accustomed to, being in the background. Put me in the back, as long as I keep winning fights."

Division loses its class

The heavyweight class hasn't had an undisputed champion since Lennox Lewis in 1999.

Interest in the acronym-plagued heavyweight class has eroded faster than Cancun's once powdery beaches, swept away by Hurricane Wilma.

That bothers Ruiz.

"I hate to say it, but it looks like a dead weight class," he said. "Nobody's stepped it up. Nobody outshines anybody. So this is the opportunity for myself to do that. To make the people want to watch the heavyweight division. Right now everybody's watching the lower weight classes. They're making a lot more excitement and the heavyweight division is more wide open. They're looking for someone to step it up."

That didn't happen when International Boxing Federation champion Wladimir Klitschko recently outpointed World Boxing Organization champ Sultan Ibragimov in the first of the heavyweight unification fights.

The Klitschko bout at Madison Square Garden was hardly the shot in the arm the heavyweights needed. It featured more booing than Isiah Thomas hears coaching his lowly New York Knicks.

"It was a pretty boring fight," said Ruiz, shrugging his broad shoulders. "The heavyweight division used to be the main thing. Now it's like myself - it's something in the background."

Ruiz was once on top of the world. When he beat Evander Holyfield for the title in March 2001, it seemed like the whole island of Puerto Rico showed up for a nine-hour parade.

"It will be forever engraved in my mind, until the day I die," Ruiz said.

Ruiz acknowledges that times have changed.

"The youngsters are watching [mixed] martial arts," he said. "It's a big sport now. It's pulling fans away from boxing. Boxing is sort of self-destructing in a way. They're not trying to clean up the fight. They are just making more of a mess of it."

The Quiet Man moves in close for more talk.

"They're letting everyone be a professional fighter," he said. "[You] need to have a certain amount of fights under your belt before you can be a professional."

Acknowledging his age, Ruiz said, "I hate to say it, but I'm 36. That's an old-timer in boxing."

Ruiz, who lives in Las Vegas, has a son who turns 1 today. "I hope to bring him a win as a birthday present," he said. "He's my secret. Why I'm in such good shape, chasing him."

He contended that even if he loses, he wins. "I want to spend more time with my family. I don't feel old. They say 36 is over the hill in the boxing world, but I feel pretty young. I feel like I can still do it."