Viviana Ruiz: “This is my moment, and I am ready.”

Viviana Ruiz: “This is my moment, and I am ready.”

Viviana Ruiz will get the chance of a lifetime next month at the Honda Center in Anaheim when she challenges the undefeated and undisputed flyweight champion of the world, Gabriela Fundora.

“Fighting for undisputed is what every boxer dreams of,” Ruiz told FightPost. “This is my moment, and I am ready.”

The 43-year-old Ruiz enters the biggest fight of her career confident of upsetting the odds and inflicting the first defeat on the resume of Fundora, who is unbeaten in seventeen fights. “Several boxers have won rounds against her and exposed flaws in her style,” Ruiz said. “But eventually she has caught up to them, and they couldn’t handle her size and strength. When that time comes in this fight, I will succeed where the others have failed. My strength and will to win are the difference.”

Ruiz is riding a two-fight win streak since losing a close decision to Louisa Hawton in 2024 in a fight that probably came too soon for Ruiz after a serious Achilles tendon rupture. Ruiz left her native Colombia in 2009 to live in Australia and came late to boxing. Ruiz was 32 when her boxing life started, and after initially being told she was too old to start boxing so late in her life, she now has a chance to change that life. Ruiz had over sixty amateur fights and came close to qualifying for the Olympics before turning professional in 2021 with a 3rd stoppage victory over Bec Moss. A split-decision defeat against Jacinta Austin over four rounds in her second fight was followed by seven straight wins before that defeat to Hawton two years ago, which stalled her momentum somewhat. But a 4th round stoppage comeback win over Jittamat Phomta and a points decision last time out over Maria Magdalena Rivera have brought Ruiz to a point in her career where she has nothing to lose and everything to gain.