Beating Jaron Ennis will make me the top welterweight

WBA welterweight titleholder Eimantas Stanionis has landed the biggest fight of his career.

The 30-year-old from Lithuania will meet IBF welterweight champion Jaron “Boots” Ennis in a unification fight set for April 12 at Boardwalk Hall in Atlantic City, New Jersey.

The unification bout would consolidate two of the four major belts with the other two champions in the division being the WBC belt holder Mario Barrios and WBO title holder Brian Norman Jnr.

Stanionis, who now trains in Los Angeles at Wild Card Boxing, spoke to BoxingScene via text to explain how the fight came to be.

“My team met and gave me two options: fight my mandatory or go after Boots,” Stanionis, 15-0 (9 KOs) told BoxingScene via text. “It was an easy decision, unify and go for greatness. The fans want to see the best fighters face each other and this is the perfect matchup. This fight was supposed to happen a few years ago, but it couldn’t be made. We’ve both been talking about fighting the best, so when the opportunity came, I jumped at it. This fight is the biggest fight of my life. A win over Jaron Ennis would place me as the top welterweight in boxing.”

Stanionis won a unanimous decision over Gabriel Maestre in May, which ended a two-year layoff. That fight was for the WBA regular title, which has since seen him elevated to outright title holder with Terence Crawford – the former undisputed champion of the division – moving up to junior middleweight. Previously, Stanionis had been scheduled multiple times to fight Vergil Ortiz Jnr in 2023, but that bout never came to fruition.

Ennis, 27, 33-0 (29 KOs), signed with Matchroom Boxing last year. He has subsequently fought twice. He stopped David Avanesyan in July and won a unanimous decision over Karen Chukhadzhian in November in a rematch of their fight from January 2023. Both fights took place at the Wells Fargo Center in Ennis’ hometown of Philadelphia. For Stanionis, the fight signals the start of his goal to become the undisputed champion of the welterweight division.

“My goal is to unify all the belts in the welterweight division and become the undisputed champion,” Stanionis said.

“That’s the ultimate goal for me right now. The more belts I collect, the closer I get to proving that I am the best in the division.”

Lucas Ketelle took an unconventional path to boxing, eventually finding his stride in gyms and media. For the past decade, he has hosted the “Lukie Boxing” podcast, filmed training camps for fighters like Arnold Barboza Jnr, Mikey Garcia and Caleb Plant, and worked with top professionals such as Mike Bazzel. Ketelle is also an author of “Inside the Ropes of Boxing,” a guide for young fighters, a writer for ProBox TV, BoxingScene and a member of the Boxing Writers Association of America. Find him on X at @LukieBoxing.