IBF welterweight champion Jaron ‘Boots’ Ennis weighed in at 146.4 lbs on Friday for his title defense against David Avanesyan this Saturday, July 13th, at the Wells Fargo Center in Philadelphia. Avanesyan came in at the limit of 147 lbs for their headliner on live DAZN.
Avanesyan (30-4-1, 18 KOs) looked a little bit better at the weigh-in today than the 27-year-old Boots (31-0, 28 KOs), who one could tell had taken off a lot of water weight to get down to the welterweight limit.
Both fighters are coming off long lays of a year or more, and it’ll be interesting to see which of them it affects more. Ennis absorbed a lot of punishment in his last fight against Roiman Villa in his tenth-round knockout win on July 8, 2023.
The Crawford Shadow: A High Bar for Ennis
For Boots Ennis to receive full credit for beating the 35-year-old Avanesyan, he’s going to have to knock him out faster than Terence Crawford did two years ago with his sixth-round KO victory on December 10, 2022. If Ennis is forced to go the full twelve-round distance or beyond six rounds to beat Avanesyan, some boxing fans will criticize him.
“He will leave himself wide open to body shots and uppercuts,” said pod host Teddy Atlas on his YouTube channel, talking about David Avanesyan’s flaws in his game against Jaron Ennis on Saturday night.
Avanesyan is there to be hit against all of his opponents, but it’s up to Boots to land his shots without getting hit a lot. The Russian fighter has much power, which could make him look bad. In Avanesyan’s loss to Crawford, he hit him with plenty of heavy shots before succumbing in the sixth round.
“The mindset of Ennis. He wants to get as much attention as he can. He’s great, but not enough people know about him, and he wants to get it out there more. Knowing in his mind that he’s that much better than Avanesyan, I think he’ll have it in his mind to outdo Crawford,” Atlas said about Boots Ennis.
Ennis’s No-Win Situation
Ennis is in a no-win situation fighting Avanesyan because regardless of whether he destroys him or not, fans aren’t going to give him credit. Avaneysan has been out of the ring for two years, and he’s no spring chicken at 35. On top of that, he was knocked out in his last fight by then 34-year-old Crawford.
“Crawford stopped him in six. I think he [Ennis] and his trainers will go in there and try to stop him before that, and I think that he will,” said Atlas. “I think he’ll have a good chance of stopping a very game opponent with the same punch, an uppercut.”
Ennis isn’t the type to score early knockouts when fighting good opposition. He can KO the low-quality fighters early, but not ones with decent talent, as we saw in his last fight against Roiman Villa.
“I think it’ll take three or four rounds for Jaron Ennis to get him out of there. That will be my prediction,” said Atlas.
It’ll be surprising if Boots Ennis can knock out Avanesyan within three or four rounds because he’ll need to jump on him immediately and unload heavy, nonstop shots from round one if he wants to KO him.
“He’s bigger than Crawford,” said Atlas about Ennis. “He’s more of a natural welterweight than Crawford, and he’s very talented.”
Ennis is bigger than Crawford, so he should be fighting at 154 rather than staying in the dead 147-lb division. Moving up to 154 now makes the most sense after Saturday’s fight against Avanesyan to get the bigger paydays and put pressure on Crawford.
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