IBF welterweight champion Jaron ‘Boots’ Ennis brought in big numbers for attendance and live gate for his clash last weekend against David Avanesyan at the Wells Fargo Center in Philadelphia. Boots made easy work of Avanesyan, stopping him in five rounds in an entertaining fight.
According to @JSantoliquito at The Ring, these are the numbers for Jaron ‘Boots’ Ennis’ successful title defense against fringe contender David Avanesyan last Saturday night on July 13th at the Wells Fargo Center in Philadelphia:
– Live gate: $1,188,430
– Total attendance: 14,365 with 246 comped tickets
With those kind of numbers, ‘Boots’ Ennis should fight more at home for his future fights. That’ll be up to his promoter, Eddie Hearn, who has a lot of ideas about how he wants to turn the 27-year-old Ennis into a worldwide superstar.
What’s important is that Ennis stay busy because he’d been out of the ring for a year before fighting last Saturday, and he wasn’t being seen by fans.
That might be fine for an older fighter that has been around since the age of the dinosaurs like Terence Crawford, but not for a younger one that hasn’t been seen by casual boxing fans.
Hearn needs to get Boots fighting 4 to 6 times a year until he hits his 30s, and try and put him on every DAZN card he can, even if it means fighting on an undercard. If there’s not enough dates for Ennis to fight that frequently for headliners gigs, he needs to humble himself by taking a co-feature slot.
Hearn needs to sit Ennis down and talk him out of his idea of staying at welterweight to try and become the undisputed champion. While that’s an admirable goal, it’s pointless in this era because the welterweight division is one of the worst in the sport due to the lack of name fighters.
Hearn has ideas of matching Ennis against WBC welterweight champion Mario Barrios, WBA champ Eimantas Stanionis and WBO champ Brian Norman Jr.
Unfortunately, Boots’ chances of fighting the WBO champ Norman Jr. are slim because he’s with Top Rank, and they’re not going to do Hearn any favors by allowing his fighter to face their guy in a cross platform contest.
If Boots stays around at welterweight, he’s going to hit a roadblock when it comes to capturing the WBO belt, and he’ll have wasted his time on his goal of becoming the undisputed champion. He’d be better off moving up 154 now, and going after the top fighters in that weight class.
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