Anthony Joshua vs Andy Ruiz Jr: Brit primed to add to rich tradition and shine at Madison Square Garden

AJ will join a short list of British fighters to defend a title at the Mecca of boxing

Old faces from the flat-nose club have sat in happy and sad judgement of the fighting big men for nearly a hundred years at different versions of Madison Square Garden in New York.

As fakes, icons, pretenders, fallen idols and the other hefty dreamers from heavyweight land have punched, brawled and been left in sleeping heaps, there is always another great hope developing somewhere. However, many have been served, pushed with hype and prayers under the big room’s neon and in that naked beam they failed the test because this is not a stage for illusions, men that would be kings. No charlatans here, no fixed records or consumer darlings in this ring, boxing’s ring: It is a place for fighting truth.

Anthony Joshua was shaped on the London streets and made in the Finchley amateur boxing club gym, a model fighting citizen and now just a few days away from his Garden baptism. Last December Joshua was a guest at the Garden, witness to a night of euphoria as the boxing palace was transformed by 20,000 flag-waving Mexican fans all singing a version of their national anthem as tears fell on their cheeks. It moved Joshua, he wanted a bit of that rich tradition.

On Saturday night, on a path carved in honour by men Joshua adores, the heavyweight championship returns to the floor at the Garden and the survivors of a thousand nights of judgement, appreciation and condemnation will sit to do their jobs in seats once kept warm by the writing game’s greatest fistic scribes. The ancient word masters declared their love or hate for the heavyweights they watched, too often longing for the lost days as Ali’s glitzy perversions to their black and white trade insulted their senses. They were sublime and potent in flow, but far too often biased against change.

Joshua will walk the New York streets this week, getting ever closer to that square bit of sacred floor at the Garden. He knows that history adores the breathless exploits of the men that preceded him and knows that he has to impress once the bell makes legal his assault on Andy Ruiz Jr. Joshua will add his name to a short, short list of British boxers, men like Ken Buchanan and Naseem Hamed, to defend a world title at the Garden in the beloved fight city. Joshua’s belts, however, are costume jewellery at the venue.

The American challenger is a late arrival at the party, drafted in when local fool Jarrell Miller failed multiple drug tests five weeks ago; Ruiz was fresh from a fight, in his own type of fighting condition and willing to salvage the Joshua show for an exchange of excessive cash. Other heavyweights refused five and six million dollars according to Eddie Hearn, Joshua’s promoter and the man tasked with filling the foul void the disgraced Miller left.

Ruiz is a man of Mexican descent and appetite, a slicker fighter than his bulk suggests and, just like an old Garden favourite from the Thirties called Two-Ton Tony Galento, he will come out swinging for glory.

Galento looked less like a contender than Ruiz, but he could fight and the Garden crowd has always demanded honesty in the men and now women they figure are there to lose. Galento, incidentally, fought an octopus, a bear and a kangaroo to help promote his fights.

The Garden crowd has knowledge and winning is not necessarily enough, which is something heavyweight world champion Wladimir Klitschko discovered when he retained his titles on points one night in 2008, but was booed from the ring in his unapologetic grandeur, leaving the ring Joe Louis, Rocky Marciano, Muhammad Ali, Joe Frazier and Lennox Lewis once occupied empty.

It will not be a repeat of the Fight of Century, that crazy night in 1971 when an unbeaten Ali and Frazier put each other in hospital, changed boxing forever.

Joshua appears relaxed ahead of his fight vs Ruiz Jr (PA)

On that night, which was bizarrely on a Monday, Frank Sinatra was a ringside photographer, the banned, infamous and fabulous sat and marvelled as the two boxers left the world in no doubt that a fine heavyweight championship fight is sport’s greatest night.

Joshua will breathe in that rare air this week, filling his lungs and head with crazy dreams as he walks to the Madison Square Garden ring.