By Charles Brun: Anthony Joshua and Andy Ruiz Jr. will be meeting next week for their first of three news conferences on Wednesday in Diriyah, Saudi Arabia. Both fighters will be in attendance to promote their December 7 rematch in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. It’ll be a full week of press conferences for the fighters. They’ll be meeting on Thursday in New York, and then on Friday in London.
New York an odd choice for Joshua-Ruiz rematch press conference
It would have been better for the U.S press conference to take place in Los Angeles, California rather than New York. Ruiz’s fan base is in Southern California, not New York. Joshua arguably has more boxing fans in New York than Ruiz. It doesn’t make sense at all for the press conference to take place there. If the idea is to create more subscribers to DAZN, then California where the U.S press conference should take place. It’s unclear whether Team Ruiz had any say-so about the location for the U.S press conference.
Ruiz may need to talk it up to keep boxing fans from falling asleep because former IBF/WBA/WBO heavyweight champion Joshua (22-1, 21 KOs) could make it dull if he’s going to be using canned speeches.
Joshua needs to liven up this time at the press conferences
He won’t be able to sell the Ruiz Jr. rematch by trash-talking Lennox Lewis repeatedly, because that’s already played out between them. Matchroom promoter Eddie Hearn will obviously shoulder most of the way of marketing the fight by giving countless interviews, but Joshua needs to help out this time. Giving speeches isn’t going to get the job done.
