By Steve Kim

Heavyweight Andy Ruiz improved to 26-0 (17 KO's) by pounding out an eight round decision over veteran journeyman Raphael Zumbrano on Saturday night the CenturyLink Center in Omaha, Nebraska. He looked much sharper than he did on September 26th when he out-pointed Joell Godfrey, in what was his first fight in over nine months.

"I thought he fought a real tough guy in a sense that the guy was like a rock, he took everything," said promoter Bob Arum of Ruiz's performance.

"And the thing that I loved about Andy was his punch rate and the fact it kept up for all eight rounds."

And Top Rank plans on keeping the 26-year old active. He is already scheduled for the December 5th card in Fresno, California, which is headlined by 2012 U.S. Olympian, Jose Ramirez on UniMas. Ruiz, who fought as high as 272 pound last year, has lost a significant amount of weight recently. This past weekend he weighed in at 248.75 pounds.

"What we had to do, as you saw, we did a hurry-up job on him in the latter part of the year once he took the weight off and was back on track and you see we have him fighting every month," said Arum.

Steve Kim is the news editor for BoxingScene.com.