Razor Ruddock, 51, to fight for Canadian heavyweight title in Toronto | Toronto Star
On Halloween night in 1992, Lennox Lewis met Donovan (Razor) Ruddock in a high-stakes clash in London — the top two heavyweight contenders on the globe meeting to see who would advance to a world title fight.
Back then, Lewis flattened Toronto’s Ruddock in two rounds and later became an undisputed world champ.
Next month the pair will share the ring for a title fight at Ricoh Coliseum. The Kitchener-raised Lewis, 49 and long retired, will be there as co-promoter of the showdown for the Canadian heavyweight title on Sept. 11.
And Ruddock? He’s fighting. At 51. For real.
After 13 years away, Ruddock is three fights into his comeback and facing Belleville, Ont. native Dillon Carman for a national title. By returning, he hopes to prove clean living and a positive attitude can stop the aging process the way he once stopped opponents with his thunderous left hand.
“If you take care of your body, train and stay in physical condition, it has nothing to do with age,” Ruddock said Wednesday at a news conference announcing the fight card.
“That’s what I want to prove, and it will be very, very sad if in fact it turns out that I’m wrong. The alternative is just not acceptable.”
Like many other athletes, boxers tend to peak in their mid- to late 20s, but even in a bruising sport that rule has high-profile exceptions.
In 2011, Bernard Hopkins won a light-heavyweight title at 46, making him the oldest boxer ever to claim a world championship, and he held the belt until last year.
Light-heavyweight Archie Moore won a world title fight at 44, fought until 48, and later mentored heavyweight champion George Foreman, whose comeback most closely resembles Ruddock’s.
Foreman ended a decade-long hiatus in 1987, challenged unsuccessfully for a world title in 1991, and won a world championship in 1994 at age 45. He parlayed the fame gained from his second career into entrepreneurial success, his name gracing a popular line of indoor grills.
Like Foreman, Ruddock’s long layoff included weight gain. He’s lean now but says he peaked at more than 300 pounds. Like Foreman, he dabbled in business, developing aline of trash compactors named The Boxer.
But Ruddock’s product never took off the way Foreman’s did, and though he’s best remembered for a pair of competitive brawls with Mike Tyson in 1991, Ruddock was never a world champ.
A generation later, he and wife Tritcha say that will change. They have a five-year timeline for Ruddock’s second career, and it includes a world title. Soon.
“We’re going to become heavyweight champion of the world. We know that we can do it,” says Tritcha Ruddock, who also manages her husband. “If you look at the heavyweight division there’s a missing link, and he’s the missing link.”
But in a sport where brain trauma is a job hazard and youth is an asset, how does a 51-year-old fighter even get a licence to compete?
According to the Ontario Athletics Commission, there are no age restrictions on pro boxers. If a fighter can pass a battery of medical tests, including a CT scan and HIV screening, and if the commission deems the upcoming bout fair and competitive, he or she can be licensed.
In Ruddock’s first comeback bout in March, he stopped 44-year-old Ray Olubowale in five rounds. Another win in May made Ruddock the No. 2-ranked heavyweight in Canada, setting up September’s title fight.
But Canadian champ Carman, 29, says Ruddock’s win streak, along with his dreams of becoming the oldest world champ in history, will end here.
“Let’s be real honest — he should have stayed in retirement,” Carman says. “After this fight he’ll be in retirement.”
The title bout will be on the undercard of an event headlined by a world title fight — thefirst held in Toronto since 1984 — between Montreal’s Adonis (Superman) Stevenson and challenger Tommy (Kryptonite) Karpency.
than Razor Ramon these days.
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