Matchroom announced today that Jaron ‘Boots’ Ennis and Jesse ‘Bam’ Rodriguez will share a card in a doubleheader on November 9th, live on DAZN. The event will be staged at the Wells Fargo Center in Philadelphia.
Ennis (32-0, 29 KOs) will headline, defending his IBF welterweight title in a rematch against his mandatory Karen Chukhadzhian. It’s a questionable headliner due to the lack of fan interest in the ‘Boots’ Ennis vs. Chukhadzhian rematch, but promoter Eddie Hearn hopes to turn the Philadelphia native Jaron into a star.
Hearn recently lost the purse bid for the Ennis-Chukhadzhian, which begs the question: how did Hearn get Chukhadzhian’s management to agree to have the fight staged in Philadelphia rather than Germany?
Hearn likely had to pay a princely sum to get Chukhadzhian to agree to fight in Philadelphia. In the end, Hearn may have been better off putting the money into winning the purse bid, and he wouldn’t have had to deal with paying to get Team Chukhadzhian to fight in Philly.
He’s got his work cut out for him due to the absence of notable fighters at 147 and his unwillingness to pay the champions to agree to fight Ennis. They won’t agree to lowball offers for fights they have little chance of winning to come to Philadelphia.
The British promoter Hearn is going to need to understand the U.S. fighters because he doesn’t seem like he has any understanding of how Americans work.
Hearn recently failed to negotiate a deal with WBO welterweight champion Brian Norman Jr. when he faced to sweeten the deal by $500,000 from 1.7 million to 2.2 million for a unification clash. Team Norman was willing to agree to the $1.7 million to fight Ennis in Las Vegas, but Hearn didn’t agree to the offer.
Hearn thinks that after Boots fights Karen, Team Norman will see the light and agree to his offer. I seriously doubt it. If anything, their price will likely jump to $3 million after Norman Jr. destroys Derrieck Cuevas on November 8th, and he looks like a golden idol in that performance.
It’s important that Hearn do a better job of matching Ennis because he’s getting off to a poor start with him fighting David Avanesyan and now Chukhadzhian. With teh way things are going, Ennis is heading in the same direction as Demetrius Andrade, a former Matchroom fighter, who Hearn matched against weak oppoisition and failed to further his career.
WBC super flyweight champion ‘Bam’ Rodriguez (20-0, 13 KOs) defends against Pedro Guevara (42-4-1, 22 KOs) in the co-feature. Fans on social media believe the Rodriguez vs. Guevara fight should be the true headliner becaue there’s more interest in that match-up than the main event mismatch between Boots and Chukhadzhian.
Ennis already beat that guy by a lopsided 12-round unanimous decision a year ago on January 7th, winning by the scores 120-108, 120-108, and 120-108.
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