As the venerable Adonis, Anthony ‘The Wannabe Notorious’ Joshua prepares for his rematch against Andy ‘Dad Bod’ Ruiz Jr in Saudi Arabia on December 7th, the general consensus in the boxing world is that the little Mexican might just knock him out again. Even fellow heavyweight Tyson Fury had a few ‘kind’ words for AJ in the summer, which will probably serve to add fuel to the fire should the two of them meet in the ring.

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But the friendly banter didn’t end there, and not one for mincing words, The Gypsy King didn’t have much faith in his compatriot to get the job done the second time around and had this to say on the True Geordie podcast about his fellow countryman’s upcoming rematch:

If he gets knocked out twice in a row, I can’t see him continuing to be fair.

Andy Ruiz Jr for example, little fat pig, comes in on three weeks’ notice, murdered every donut and taco in California, goes in with a guy who had a 12-week training camp with every sport scientist in the UK.

AJ has broken every heart monitor in sight, he’s been every cross-fit machine, been on the best diet you can get, but the fat fella goes in there and bowls him over in seven rounds.

I see the rematch going pretty much similar to the first fight..they’ll have different approaches and they’re gonna try and have different gameplans.

But Mike Tyson said ‘everyone’s got a great game plan until you get punched in the face’.

And punched in the face he was! Ruiz put AJ down four times in seven rounds while the Mexican only had to get up from the canvass once. Reuters explains how Ruiz managed to dethrone the Brit with a seventh-round stoppage in front of a capacity crowd at New York’s Madison Square Gardens. It was a defeat of colossal proportions, which the American audience gobbled up.

In fact, Ladbrokes claims that Joshua’s defeat to Ruiz is one of the biggest upsets in combat sports, with the referee having to stop the match to spare AJ any more embarrassment. Now, with the rematch quickly approaching, even Ruiz will not cease to rankle in AJ’s wounds.

In a back-handed show of compassion, Ruiz had the hutzpah to tell Sky Sports that Joshua should take a break from boxing if he loses the rematch. “He should take a little break if I beat him,” he said. A break might not be a bad idea, and if Fury’s psychological assessment of his fellow heavyweight is accurate, Ruiz is still inside his head, so he’s got a mental edge going into the rematch.

Fury described Ruiz as being Joshua’s bogeyman. Whether this is true or not remains to be seen, and come December 7th it’s AJ who’ll be picking up golf if the Mexican lays him flat on his back again.