Was the Andy Ruiz, Jr. upset of Anthony Joshua really that big of a deal? In my opinion, not really...Ruiz should have been given a much better chance by the oddsmakers and public than he was, and a lot of that had to do with his physique. Plus, Anthony Joshua hasn't been champ long enough to establish an "aura of invincibility" and he's shown weaknesses in the past.
But those are subjective criteria. Can we use objective data to rank heavyweight boxing's upsets? We will try, using SportsRatings' Heavyweight Boxing Ratings to put a number on the upset value of each major upset.
We'll find the candidates using the "internet." A simple search reveals several recent articles discussing the biggest upsets in boxing history, and from these articles we've culled 20 candidates. Here they are, along with the approximate betting odds at the time, reflecting how much of an underdog the victor was:
1892 James J Corbett KO 21 John L Sullivan 4-1
1915 Jess Willard KO 26 Jack Johnson 8-5
1926 Gene Tunney UD 10 Jack Dempsey 4-1
1935 James J Braddock UD 15 Max Baer 10-1
1936 Max Schmeling KO 12 Joe Louis 10-1
1959 Ingemar Johansson TKO 3 Floyd Patterson 3-1
1964 Muhammad Ali RET 6 Sonny Liston 7-1
1974 Muhammad Ali KO 8 George Foreman 3-1
1978 Leon Spinks SD 15 Muhammed Ali 8-1
1985 Michael Spinks UD 15 Larry Holmes 4-1
1990 Buster Douglas KO 10 Mike Tyson 42-1
1993 Michael Bentt TKO 1 Tommy Morrison n/a
1994 Oliver McCall TKO 2 Lennox Lewis 5-1
1994 George Foreman KO 10 Michael Moorer 2-1
1996 Evander Holyfield TKO 11 Mike Tyson 5-1
2001 Hasim Rahman KO 5 Lennox Lewis 16-1
2003 Corey Sanders TKO 2 Wlad Klitschko 20-1
2004 Lamon Brewster TKO 5 Wlad Klitschko 7-1
2015 Tyson Fury UD 12 Wlad Klitschko 4-1
2019 Andy Ruiz TKO 7 Anthony Joshua 13-1
As you can see, there's quite a bit of recency bias. We can probably assume that upsets didn't become more common over time, but here, half of the 20 upsets occurred in the last three decades. That's one major weakness of using subjective criteria: the first hurdle is that people have to know the upset occurred, and better yet remember how they felt when it did. Going by the listed odds, it seems that some of the more recent fights were the biggest upsets, but the historical record of odds isn't perfect, and they way the betting public responded to long shots has arguably changed.
We'll stick with these 20, for now. Several names put up multiple times in this list. Muhammad Ali appears three times, and amazingly he appears twice as the winner and just once as the loser. Not so for Wladimir Klitschko, who was upset three times. George Foreman appears as victor and vanquished, while Mike Tyson and Lennox Lewis were both unexpectedly defeated twice.
To rank the "upset value" of a fight, we will divide the loser's rating at the time by the winners. In our power rating, scores increase over time, so division is better here than subtraction. That way the early fights on the list should have a "fighting chance" to be considered as big as the more recent upsets.
Here are the results. Each fighter's record is listed along with their ranking in our system at the time.
- 9/21/1985 #93 Michael Spinks (27-0-0) def. #1 Larry Holmes (48-0-0) Score: 83.06
The #1 upset on our list is an undefeated fighter beating another undefeated fighter. Michael Spinks was the light heavyweight champ, moving up to take on Larry Holmes. It's perhaps overrated by this system as Spinks barely had any points, since he wasn't a heavyweight. Also, Holmes was at the end of his long winning streak but was clearly a bit slower than he was at his peak. It's for this reason most people don't put it among the very biggest: the fact that Holmes lost made him look like he was ready to lose a fight. Some revisionist history, yes, but understandable. That Spinks won the rematch, too, damaged the "upset value" of the first result. But in our system this is by far the biggest upset ever.
- 2/15/1978 8-1 #15 Leon Spinks (6-0-1) def. #1 Muhammed Ali (55-2-0) Score: 32.36
Before Holmes fell to Michael, Muhammad Ali fell to Michael's older brother Leon. Again, it's obvious Ali was well past his peak by the time of this fight, and since Leon was a "real" heavyweight this one logically ranks below the Holmes upset. But at the time no one gave Leon—despite being an olympic gold medalist—a chance. Ali didn't either, and reportedly didn't train at all for the fight. Unlike Holmes, Ali won the rematch. Our system calls this one a very distance 2nd, mostly due to the fact that Leon had amassed some rating points (enough to be ranked in the top 15 at the time).
- 2/11/1990 #12 Buster Douglas (28-4-1) def. #1 Mike Tyson (37-0-0) Score: 24.59
This is the big one. The one almost everyone ends up concluding was the biggest upset in heavyweight boxing history, and it's hard to argue against it. Unlike Holmes and Ali, Tyson was at his absolute peak at the time of the loss. Only in retrospect do people look for reasons it happened: Tyson had partied the night before the fight, Douglas lost his mom to a stroke just weeks before and that motivated him. But these were not reflected in the odds which were at least 30-1 and possibly 42-1 at different venues. We even ranked Douglas near the top ten, but Tyson was so feared that anyone outside the top five was considered a probable first round KO; outside the top ten? First minute.
- 6/01/2019 #31 Andy Ruiz Jr (32-1-0) def. #1 Anthony Joshua (22-0-0) Score: 20.90
Well, so much for my assertion that this wasn't that big of an upset: in my own system, it comes out #4 of all time! The reason is that Ruiz's stock fell a lot in the last two years, making him underrated. He lost a close call to Joseph Parker, then was idle for quite a while which reduced his rating. He had been as high as #8 but by the time of the fight was just #31.
- 4/22/2001 #28 Hasim Rahman (34-2-0) def. #1 Lennox Lewis (38-1-1) Score: 20.47
This fight has some similarities to the Ruiz-Joshua upset. Both Ruiz and Rahman stand 6' 2" while Joshua and Lewis are 6' 5"+. Like Ruiz, Rahman's stock had gone down in the few years prior to the upset. Rahman started 29-0 but had been knocked out twice in his last 7 fights, while Lewis was looking more and more invincible, easily handling big punchers like Michael Grant and David Tua (who had KO'ed Rahman). Lewis played the fool in the fifth round, lowering his hands and getting caught. Everyone assumed he had the upset out of his system with the 1994 Oliver McCall loss, but apparently not!
- 11/05/1994 #57 George Foreman (72-4-0) def. #1 Michael Moorer (35-0-0) Score: 15.03
If you just look at the 2-1 odds, you'd wonder why this fight is even brought up as a major upset. The odds don't tell the story here; because everyone knows Foreman always has a puncher's chance, he's never been a huge underdog. Who wants to bet on the favorite when one punch could spoil your ticket? And that's exactly what happened here in the 10th round, after Foreman had lost every single round up to that point. Foreman was coming off a lackluster loss to Tommy Morrison and hadn't fought in the year since then. He'd fallen to #57 in our rankings while Moorer had just ascended to the top of the heap by beating Evander Holyfield. The fact that Foreman was 45 years old makes this one memorable; no one thought he could win a heavyweight crown at that age, but the odds show that few were willing to actually bet against him.
- 3/08/2003 #95 Corey Sanders (38-2-0) def. #3 Wlad Klitschko (40-1-0) Score: 11.29
This is the highest-ranked upset where the loser wasn't ranked #1 at the time. Wladimir Klitschko was an upstart heavyweight, a gold medalist, who had stumbled big time against Ross Purrity but seemingly had righted the ship since that 1998 debacle. Not so. Corrie Sanders wasn't really making waves at the time—he'd fought just twice since losing to Hasim Rahman in 2000—and we had him at #95. Klitschko was knocked down twice in the first round by the southpaw and twice more in the next, the second of three upset losses in the middle of his career—before he became champion.
- 11/28/2015 #4 Tyson Fury (24-0-0) def. #1 Wlad Klitschko (64-3-0) Score: 7.18
Klitschko's nearly 10-year reign ended with this fight, so he was at his peak in terms of our ratings. Meanwhile Fury was undefeated but was a very distant #4. What most people don't take into consideration here was that Klitschko's wife Hayden Panettiere, was suffering from post-partum depression in the months before this fight, and that has to be the cause of Klitschko's lackluster effort here. Wlad threw few punches and looked uncharacteristically tentative during the first 11 rounds. Of course, Fury is an odd target, and had the reach advantage over Klitschko. Wlad dominated the 12th round but it was far too late. Fury had been mocked for years as a substandard fighter getting by on size (and for having punched himself in the face) but now he was champion.
- 9/24/1994 #24 Oliver McCall (24-5-0) def. #4 Lennox Lewis (25-0-0) Score: 7.01
The second fight where the loser wasn't our top-ranked fighter. Lewis was on his way, though, and this was a stumbling block that nearly derailed his slow climb. McCall was a hard puncher gifted with perhaps the best chin in heavyweight history, but he had a habit of losing decisions and was only 6-4 in rated fights at the time. He struck perfectly, though, in the second round with a counter left-right that put Lewis down for the count. He'd lose the rematch—the infamous "mental breakdown" fight that stands as his only stoppage loss. McCall was never truly KO'ed or TKO'ed, even as he fought into his mid-50s.
- 4/10/2004 #89 Lamon Brewster (29-2-0) def. #4 Wlad Klitschko (42-2-0) Score: 6.66
Wladimir Klitschko, again. This time, Lamon Brewster, who had a similar record and ranking in our system to Corrie Sanders, who had upset him a year earlier. The particulars of this fight are even stranger than the Sanders fight. Klitschko battered granite-chinned Brewster mercilessly for 4 1/2 rounds, punching himself out in the 5th after which Brewster took advantage. After the fight Klitschko's camp suggested foul play, as in possible poisoning, for Wlad's derailment. They pointed to the fight's odds, which strangely dropped from 11-1 to 3.5-1 in less than 12 hours. His post-fight blood and urine tests went missing. But the real culprit was probably a few choice left hands by Brewster along the way. Despite the pundits understandably calling Wlad's career dead in the water, he was champ within 2 years and held the title for 9 more.
- 4/05/1915 #16 Jess Willard (19-3-1) def. #2 Jack Johnson (41-5-8) Score: 6.05
Finally one of the really older fights on the list. Willard was only a moderate underdog by the odds but a heavy underdog with the general public as Johnson hadn't lost in 10 years. Willard, a giant by today's standards at over 6' 6", lost most of the fight until the round 26 KO. The result was so disbelieved that to this day many think Johnson threw the fight as part of a deal to be able to return to the United States, where he was wanted for sentencing for supposedly violating the Mann Act (Johnson was pardoned in 2018).
- 6/13/1935 #7 James J Braddock (45-23-4) def. #1 Max Baer (38-7-0) Score: 5.15
Baer was a very high-rated #1 (similar to Lennox Lewis before the Rahman fight, and much higher than Anthony Joshua) when he was upset by Braddock, who had 23 losses but rode a rare 5-fight win streak into our top ten. The fight was somewhat similar to Tyson Fury's upset of Wlad Klitschko—a big favorite frittering away the heavyweight title with an uninspired effort against an unorthodox challenger. Braddock frittered away his heavyweight title by staying idle for two years then losing to Joe Louis.
- 6/26/1959 #5 Ingemar Johansson (21-0-0) vs. #2 Floyd Patterson (35-1-0) Score: 2.89
The retired Rocky Marciano still held our #1 spot when Ingemar Johansson beat interim champ Floyd Patterson. Since Johansson was undefeated and ranked in the top five this is understandably a lesser upset by the oddsmakers and by our system. Patterson won the rematch by 5th round KO and the rubber match in the 6th, and despite two losses to Sonny Liston stayed in our top ten until 1967.
- 2/25/1964 #2 Muhammad Ali (19-0-0) def. #1 Sonny Liston (35-1-0) Score: 2.82
The first of two big upsets by the "Louisville Lip", Ali was still Cassius Clay until after this bout. Since he was undefeated and ranked a strong #2, our system doesn't consider this a huge upset, but at the time Liston had a Mike Tyson-like aura around him on invincibility. Of course no one knew he was facing the greatest heavyweight of all time, a fact that makes this result less shocking to modern fans.
- 10/29/1993 #31 Michael Bentt (10-1-0) def. #11 Tommy Morrison (38-1-0) Score: 2.16
This wasn't anything close to a true title fight, but WBO champ Morrison was coming off his big win over George Foreman and was in line for a shot at Lennox Lewis's WBC belt. The fight was considered such a formality that there was no posted line, probably due to lack of betting interest. But Bentt was no pushover; he'd been a great amateur boxer, a 5-time U.S. amateur champ, winning a bronze at the world championships in 1986 and nearly qualifying for the olympics (behind gold medalist Ray Mercer). His star fell when he lost his very first pro fight, but in this match after being rocked early he knocked Morrison down 3 times in the first round for the TKO.
- 11/09/1996 #7 Evander Holyfield (32-3-0) def. #2 Mike Tyson (45-1-0) Score: 1.86
It's hard for modern fans to see why this one was such a big deal. After all, Tyson was upset by Buster Douglas in 1990, so the invincibility was gone. And since Holyfield won the rematch (the "bite" fight), and Tyson subsequently declined, in retrospect this loss by Tyson looks like an unavoidable fact. But Holyfield had lost 2 of his last 4 fights (and been diagnosed with a heart condition that later "disappeared"). The odds for the fight started at 25-1 (50-1 in some venues) which was ridiculous and was bet down to 5-1, meaning Vegas took an unprecedented bath when Holyfield won.
- 6/19/1936 #3 Max Schmeling (56-10-4) def. #1 Joe Louis (24-0-0) Score: 1.72
Louis's first loss was a major shock at the time, but our ratings had Schmeling as a strong contender, and he held our #1 spot in 1931-32. Schmeling exploited a weakness in Louis's defense and was winning from the start to the 12th-round finish. He lost the rematch in the first round, however.
- 10/30/1974 #2 Muhammad Ali (44-2-0) def. #1 George Foreman (40-0-0) Score: 1.01
Famous for predictions that a "past-his-prime" Ali might be killed in the ring by the terrifying George Foreman, this fight was neck-and-neck by our ratings, with Ali such a close #2 that it only scores 1.01 (where 1.00 means equal odds). Foreman's aura was like none before or since; he was more feared than Sonny Liston and more invincible than Mike Tyson, and he'd crushed the two men (Frazier and Norton) that had beaten Ali, winning by KO in just 2 rounds in both cases. By that math Ali appeared doomed, but as this one proved, styles make fights.
- 9/07/1892 #4 James J Corbett (8-0-2) def. #13 John L Sullivan (38-0-1) Score: 0.44
If anyone topped Foreman's aura of invincibility it might have been John Sullivan, as audiences at that time had nothing to compare him to. Still a 4-1 favorite despite not fighting in over 3 years, Sullivan had never lost in bareknuckle or Queensberry boxing rules. But our ratings penalize inactivity and Sullivan was no longer in the top ten at the time, meaning our rankings favored the #4 Corbett to win. As such, we rank this as no upset at all, though at the time fans were probably stunned.
- 9/23/1926 #1 Gene Tunney (62-1-1) def. #6 Jack Dempsey (54-4-8) Score: 0.29
Another result that shouldn't have been surprising. Dempsey gets a pass for taking 3 years off while ostensibly still heavyweight champ, but our ratings don't gift him that. Add in that we consider Tunney the #1 heavyweight at the time and we might have set the odds 4-1 in Tunney's favor instead of the other way around.
Well, that's that. For completeness' sake, we ran a script to find the biggest upsets in our database, rather than picking and choosing from recent memory, and the results show a lot more old fights:
- 1985 09 21 MICHAEL SPINKS UD LARRY HOLMES 83.06
- 1978 02 15 LEON SPINKS SD MUHAMMAD ALI 32.36
- 1922 01 02 BILL TATE WF HARRY WILLS 25.23
- 1951 07 18 JERSEY JOE WALCOT KO EZZARD CHARLES 25.08
- 1990 02 10 BUSTER DOUGLAS KO MIKE TYSON 24.59
- 2019 06 01 ANDY RUIZ JR TKO ANTHONY JOSHUA 20.90
- 2001 04 21 HASIM RAHMAN KO LENNOX LEWIS 20.47
- 1931 12 18 KING LEVINSKY UD TOMMY LOUGHRAN 19.39
- 1946 08 28 JOEY MAXIM W JERSEY JOE WALCOT 17.99
- 1952 08 08 REX LAYNE W EZZARD CHARLES 17.52
- 1933 04 03 LOU SCOZZA W MAXIE ROSENBLOOM 15.90
- 1928 08 15 ROBERTO ROBERTI WF JOHNNY RISKO 15.23
- 1953 08 11 NINO VALDES UD EZZARD CHARLES 15.22
- 1994 11 05 GEORGE FOREMAN KO MICHAEL MOORER 15.03
- 1937 10 15 IZZY GASTANAGA W JOHN HENRY LEWIS 14.49
- 1930 04 28 ERNIE SCHAAF W TOMMY LOUGHRAN 13.47
- 1927 07 21 JACK DEMPSEY KO JACK SHARKEY 13.23
- 1917 02 07 BAT JIM JOHNSON KO HARRY WILLS 13.02
- 1922 08 04 SAM LANGFORD W BILL TATE 12.73
- 1952 08 06 BOB SATTERFIELD W HAROLD JOHNSON 12.58
- 1932 01 29 MAX BAER W KING LEVINSKY 11.55
- 1982 10 02 RENALDO SNIPES W TREVOR BERBICK 11.34
- 2003 03 08 CORRIE SANDERS KO WLAD KLITSCHKO 11.29
- 1997 11 22 SHANNON BRIGGS MD GEORGE FOREMAN 11.12
- 1932 06 24 STANLEY POREDA W ERNIE SCHAAF 10.98
Here we see the top two results remain but after that only 5 more of the original 20 make the list, but yes, Ruiz beating Joshua shows up at a strong #6. Instead of modern results we have multiple fights featuring Jersey Joe Walcott, Bill Tate, Harry Wills, Ezzard Charles (x3), King Levinsky, Tommy Loughran, Ernie Schaaf, and other names that are less mentioned today. Among recent fights, George Foreman's loss to Shannon Briggs shows up (normally that fight is mentioned as one of the top robberies of all-time, rather than upsets; apparently when it's a robbery it's not filed as an upset).
We will leave it as an exercise to the reader to delve further into the fights above, or better yet, ask someone who was around back then and followed boxing!