Are Ruddock’s Fists Razor-Sharp, Too? : Boxing: Heavyweight talks a strong game and is impressive in workouts for Monday night fight against Mike Tyson.

Is he merely the greatest gym fighter of his era? Is Donovan “Razor” Ruddock, the Jamaican by way of Toronto and lately Fort Lauderdale, just the latest heavyweight pretender who puts down Mike Tyson everywhere but in the ring?

Or is Ruddock -- as chiseled as the Joe Louis statuary in the Caesars Palace sports book -- a real-life second coming of the Buster Douglas of Tokyo who destroyed Tyson and his myth of invincibility? Will Ruddock’s awesome left hand find the target as easily as his harmless talk?

Monday night may tell whether Tyson’s place in history is plunging or if he likely is the once and future champion. Ruddock, 27, promises to be a test, and he’s much too big to argue with: 6 feet 3, 226 pounds. He’s bigger than Tyson and hits every bit as hard.

The consensus here on this 12-rounder, Tyson’s third comeback fight since his Douglas debacle, is that Ruddock has a good chance if he can remain composed when Tyson charges. Ruddock insists he will, and more.

“I’m going to meet him in the middle of the ring and I’m going to show him he’s got his side of the ring but I’ve got mine.”

He made this pronouncement after a 1 1/2-hour workout at the Doolittle Community Center on the northwest side of town. To the reggae of Bob Marley, Ruddock danced and punched out opponents only he could see. He bounced around the ring with such force the slats beneath the canvas crashed like thunder. Then he punished the bags so long and so hard the wonder was he could keep his arms pumping like pistons.

“Look at my guy,” said proud Howie Albert, one of three trainers in the Ruddock camp.

“This guy is a much better puncher than Douglas,” said Slim Robinson, another trainer, once a Sonny Liston sparring partner. “It makes no sense for Tyson to take this fight. I think it’s in the best interests of Don King that he’s doing this.”

One day recently, old Slim said to Ruddock, “You ever dream about what you’re going to do?”

“Yeah, I do that,” replied Ruddock, enthusiastically. “Yea-a-a-a-h.”

“Tell me about it,” said Slim.

“He can’t get past the second round,” said Ruddock. “It never gets to the third round in my dreams.”

Are these voices in the wilderness? After all, they are out here on the edge of a sandy nothingness in God’s hidden corner of Las Vegas, amid a cluster of neighborhood churches -- the Greater New Jerusalem Baptist Church, the Greater Calvary Baptist Church, the Greater St. James Baptist Church, the Metropolitan Institutional Baptist Church, the Grace Temple, the New Bethel Baptist Church.

But for all the earthly illusions of the Strip, one can always find the reality of an oddsboard close by. The hard line has Tyson an overwhelming 6-1 favorite.

In 1972, Louise Ruddock decided to leave Jamaica to pursue a Canadian dream. She settled in Toronto, and brought the rest of the family, including her husband, Mingetta, three years later. This was when her son, Razor, answered only to the name Donovan, younger than Delroy and older than Tobits and their sisters Juneau and Marcia.

As brothers do, Donovan fought with Delroy until one day he made peace. Donovan wanted something from Delroy.

“What is it?” Delroy asked.

“Your book bag,” Donovan said.

“My book bag?”

“Yes, your book bag. I’m going to New York. I want to go to New York and be a boxer.”

Looking back on that conversation, Delroy, now his brother’s manager, said: “I had to settle him down. He didn’t have to go to New York. He could do it in Toronto.”

So Ruddock stayed, and still got his wish to live in New York -- for a year he visited an uncle in Brooklyn. Ruddock boxed there, as he did in the Canadian armed-forces reserve. That’s where he picked up the name Razor, for his sharp punches.

“I had a short amateur career,” he said. “The early part of my pro career was like the second half of an amateur career. I was still learning the basics.” His sixth pro fight was a draw and in 1985 he lost to one Dave Jaco, felled by asthma not Jaco.

Running in 20-below temperatures in Canada had set off his condition, which has since been controlled. Still, he retired briefly. But Larry Holmes needed a sparring partner before his second losing effort against Michael Spinks. Holmes wanted somebody who could move and hit like a hammer.

Razor turned out to be sharper than Holmes had anticipated, pounding him and sidestepping the return punches -- according to Ruddock. His version is that Holmes wanted no further embarrassment and fired him.

He’s built a 25-1-1 record, largely on one of the fastest and heaviest left hands in the business. It’s a hybrid punch, not all uppercut and not all hook. Ruddock calls it “The Smash.” Two opponents in particular were “smashed,” Michael Dokes and Bonecrusher Smith. Even Tyson, who will give away 11 inches in reach, admits, “He can hit you with a good shot.”

In November 1989, Tyson was supposed to fight Ruddock in Edmonton. It’s never been clear why the fight didn’t come off. A few weeks before, Tyson got a cold and said he wasn’t going through with it. As Delroy Ruddock saw it, Tyson realized: “This kid is nothing to play with. I’m going to take a walk. You handle it any way you want.”

Ruddock, who now lives in Fort Lauderdale, where he and his wife Judy, a nurse, are raising their four children, is stronger now than in 1989, seemingly superior to Henry Tillman and Alex Stewart, Tyson’s one-round comeback victims. The Razor’s edge? “Nobody Tyson’s fought has had the arsenal and the confidence I have,” Ruddock said.