Jaron ‘Boots’ Ennis says he wants to be a four-division undisputed champion at 147, 154, 160, and 168 before retiring. However, it’s unrealistic that Ennis (32-0, 29 KOs) will accomplish even half of his goal.
IBF welterweight champion Ennis is nearing 28, holds only one title, and there are zero unification fights in sight for him. Boots’ promoter Eddie Hearn failed to negotiate a unification fight against WBO 147-lb champion Brian Norman Jr. after choosing not to sweeten the offer by $500K to get the deal done.
Hearn also complained about the financial demands of the other champions at welterweight, who want to be paid well to take on the dangerous Boots. Ennis isn’t a PPV fighter, so there’s no upside for any of the champions to want to risk fighting him.
Some fans feel that Hearn isn’t willing to invest the money to negotiate the unification fights needed for Boots Ennis to become undisputed at 147. As such, he’ll sit and age at welterweight, making low-level title defenses against fighters like Karen Chukhadzhian and David Avanesyan. To turn a fighter into a star, promoters must invest initially if they want to rapidly make a fighter a household name.
The cheap way of turning a fighter into a star is to match them against low-level opposition for an extended period of 10+ years. That’s basically what Gervonta Davis’ promoters and management have done.
It’s taken 10+ years for Gervonta to become a star, and he’s nowhere near what he should be due to the weak match-making that his management has done. In Boots Ennis’ case, Hearn can’t afford to do that because he’s already nearing 28 and only holds one world title. Ennis isn’t young enough to take the Tank Davis long-term route to becoming a PPV attraction. Moreover, Ennis doesn’t have the one-punch power that he has to destroy the soft opposition that he’s being fed.
“I want to be undisputed at 147, 154, 160 and 168. I got stuff I want to do outside of boxing, too. There’s a lot of things I got going on and a lot of things I want to do, but I’m just focused on handling what I’ve got in front of me first,” said Jaron ‘Boots’ Ennis to TBISE247Sports about his goals in his career.
It sounds like a pathetic pipe dream that Boots Ennis has because he won’t become a four-division undisputed champion. The way things are looking, Ennis won’t even be a one-division undisputed champ. If his promoter, Hearn, cannot invest in him to unify the 147-lb division, he’ll be spinning his wheels at welterweight for the remainder of his career and will retire a one-belt champion.
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