Jaron ‘Boots’ Ennis could be making a mistake if he chooses to vacate his IBF welterweight title to move up to 154 to expand his horizons for bigger fights.
Leaving the Welterweight Comfort Zone
Ennis (32-0, 29 KOs) will lose the size, power, and talent advantage he’s been enjoying in the barren 147-lb division. He’s had a good thing going fighting at welterweight against the smaller scrubs and has made decent money without fighting anyone of quality.
The best name on the 27-year-old Boots Ennis’ resume is David Avanesyan, a career fringe contender in serious decline at 35. Boots got hit a lot against Avanesyan and did not look even slightly impressive in that fight last July.
If Ennis moves up to 154, he will face guys with the power to hurt him, and his career may quickly fall apart. For a fighter as easy to hit as Boots, he might fall apart when he faces these killers:
– Serhii Bohachuk
– Vergil Ortiz Jr.
– Israil Madrimov
– Charles Conwell
– Jesus Ramos
– Xander Zayas
– Terence Crawford
– Errol Spence Jr.
– Tim Tszyu
– Erickson Lubin
– Bakhram Murtazaliev
Ennis’ new promoter, Eddie Hearn, failed to negotiate a fight with WBO welterweight champion Brian Norman Jr this week. The negotiations fell apart over a mere $500K, which shouldn’t have been a big hurdle to overcome if there were a desire by Hearn and Boots to make that fight happen.
Also this week, Hearn lost the purse bid for Boots’ mandatory defense of his IBF belt against Karen Chukhadzhian. This was even more worrisome because if Boots intended to keep his IBF title, he’d now lose out on fighting in front of a sold-out Wells Fargo Center in Philadelphia and would be looking at fighting in Europe somewhere, possibly Germany.
Even if Hearn was unwilling to open his pocketbook to invest in his fighter, Boots, he should have been willing to pay out of his own pocket to make one of the fights happen. Shockingly, Boots and Hearn let the Norman Jr. fight slip through their fingers over a paltry $500K. You wonder if they will regret this if Boots winds up moving to 154 and getting beaten right off the bat by Madrimov or one of the other big punchers.
“It’s a very tough weight class. It’s very deep, and there are a lot of talented guys. He’s going to be giving up size. That’s one of his advantages at 147,” said boxing pundit Chris Algieri to the Probox TV YouTube channel, talking about Jaron ‘Boots’ Ennis potentially moving up to 154.
A Potential Career Setback
Ennis is crazy to move up to 154 rather than staying at welterweight because he’ll be giving away all the advantages that he’s enjoyed at 147. If his defense and talent were better, it wouldn’t be a problem for him to go up to junior middleweight to take on the killers in that division. Unfortunately, Boots’ defense is nonexistent, and he doesn’t pack enough power to glide through the opposition at 154.
“He’s huge at 147. He’s one of the biggest welterweights I’ve seen,” said Algieri. “On top of that, he’s so athletic. He [Ennis] gets hit. We saw that in his last fight [David Avanesyan]. We saw that in a lot of his fights. He’s willing to get hit with these guys because they’re smaller than him. These 154-pounders, I don’t think that’s a good idea.
“He’s going to have to adjust his style. He’s not going to be able to be so offensive-minded with the 154-pounders, the guys that are talented, the guys that are bigger, and the guys that can punch. So, if he doesn’t have that size advantage like he has at 147, he’s going to have to make adjustments to his style,” said Algieri.
It’s quite possible that Boots Ennis will lose in his first fight at 154 if the rumors are true that he could be fighting former WBA junior middleweight champion Israil Madrimov in his first fight in that division. We saw what Madrimov did to Terence Crawford last August, coming close to beating him, and hitting all night with right hands.
Since that fight, Crawford has changed his mind about trying to become an undisputed champion, and you can only conclude that Madrimov destroyed his ambition with the right hands he was hitting him with at will. If Madrimov could do that to Crawford, just imagine what he’ll do to Ennis.
“It’s tough. 154 is going to be a very tough weight class for him to jump into because it’s right into the deep waters. Everybody in that weight class is good. There are so many names. I agree going to 154 is where the money is at,” said Algieri.
154 is a division for advanced fighters with skills, and Ennis is too flawed to move up there without coming apart quickly under fire. Hearn has enough fighters to where it won’t be the end of the world for him, but Ennis will be in bad shape if his career sinks in this weight class. He’d have difficulty returning to 147 after settling in at 154. Even if he does return, there’s no telling whether he can be the fighter he was before he was worked over at 154.
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