The reported fight between Andy Ruiz Jr and Luis Ortiz is now official, and will indeed headline a PBC on FOX pay-per-view on Sunday, Sept. 4, which is Labor Day Weekend.
Tickets for the fight will go on sale on Thursday, June 23, with the event being held at Los Angeles’ Crypto.com Arena, the former Staples Center.
Ruiz (34-2, 22 KO) last fought in May 2021, returning from a long absence to beat a faded Chris Arreola in another FOX PPV main event. The 32-year-old former titleholder worked with trainer Eddy Reynoso for that fight, but will reportedly have another new trainer for this one.
Ortiz (33-2, 28 KO) also last fought on FOX PPV, kicking off this year with a win over Charles Martin. The 43-year-old Cuban southpaw was down twice in the fight, but stopped Martin in the sixth round.
FOX hasn’t had a PBC show in months, so this does at least signal they aren’t completely out of the game. We’ll have to see if there will be some more exciting Vito Mielnicki Jr main events on FOX proper, or if they just plan to dip in for the occasional PPV event.
No undercard fights have been announced yet, but you can probably expect the usual major promoter PPV fare and not something from a distant past before promoters realized they could juice the public for extra money by putting fights that used to be undercard bouts as main events of their own shows. This way you at least won’t be disappointed by what has been the standard for about 20 years now.