Jaron ‘Boots’ Ennis defends his IBF welterweight title against his mandatory Karen Chukhadzhian in a rematch this Saturday, November 9. In the other big fight on the card, WBC super flyweight champion Jesse ‘Bam’ Rodriguez fights Pedro Guevara. The event will be shown live on DAZN starting at 7:00 PM ET.
Neither of these fights is attractive to the fans, who see them as mismatches. In Boots’ case, he has no choice as Chukhadzhian is his IBF mandatory fight. Including Bam Rodriguez on this card was a good idea, but it may not be enough to pull in big ratings on DAZN.
What was really needed was Terence Crawford as Boots Ennis’ opponent because many fans are interested in seeing that fight.
Undercard
– Jesse ‘Bam’ Rodriguez vs. Pedro Guevara
– Raymond Ford vs. Orlando Gonzalez
– Khalil Coe vs. Manuel Gallegos
– Ernesto Mercado vs. Jesus Saracho
– Austin Williams vs. Gian Garrido
Ennis (32-0, 29 KOs) will fight in front of his hometown fans at the Wells Fargo Center in Philadelphia. Being at home puts a lot of pressure on 27-year-old Boots Ennis’ shoulders as he needs to look good against a fighter he fought against on January 7th last year. Ennis won with the scores 120-108, 120-108 and 120-108.
Chukhadzhian (24-2, 13 KOs) lost every round to Ennis in a 12-round unanimous decision loss, but he made himself look bad using movement and annoying shots thrown with little power.
“I’ve been watching Jaron Ennis for five years. This kid is unbeatable in my opinion,” said Eddie Hearn Matchroom Boxing. “Speed, power, movement, defense, temperament, work ethic, and he will rule the division at 147 and many divisions beyond.”
Making it more difficult for Ennis is that this is his second fight with Matchroom promoter Eddie Hearn, and he didn’t look good in his debut with the company earlier this year against David Avanesyan on July 13.
Hearn’s expectations for Boots Ennis seem to be out of step with reality. He talks about Ennis as if he is infallible, but his performances against Roiman Villa, David Avanesyan and Chukhadzhian have shown that he is beatable. This may be one of the reasons why Ennis chose to end his career at 147 with his unattainable goal of becoming an undisputed champion.
This would be possible if Hearn was willing to invest the money in Boots’ career to get the other champions to agree to fight him. He didn’t do it. We can see Ennis being stopped at 147 and unable to move forward because his promoter isn’t coming up with the dough to get the champions to fight him.
“The plan is to collect these belts and be undisputed at 147 and do the same thing at 154,” says Ennis. The champions don’t want to fight me. It’s out of my hands. I did my best. I feel that they lack confidence. They don’t believe in themselves. They know what is in front of them. A different type of mindset, a different type of animal.”
When Ennis speaks, he sounds naive and doesn’t understand his bleak situation. Of course, what we don’t know is if Ennis is intentionally using his goal of collecting the belts as an excuse to stay in the dead 147-lb division and the killer sharks at 154 it would swallow him whole. They will potentially end Ennis’ career as a top-level fighter by beating him if he moves up to 154.
So instead of going up, Ennis repeatedly says he’s staying at 147 to achieve his goal of becoming undisputed champion. He sounds like a broken record when he talks about this topic, but it might just be a foxhole for Ennis to hide in to avoid getting beaten up.
“Everyone keeps asking me about Bud. It’s the only fight everybody wants to see,” Ennis said of Crawford. “I try, I tried. I wanted it to happen. It’s always going to be ‘Yes’ on my end. It’s up to them whether it’s going to be ‘Yes’ on their end.”
Boots can’t be serious about wanting to fight Crawford because if he was, he would have already moved up to 154 to increase his chances of that fight happening.
“Of course they don’t want the fight. I am focused on what I am doing now. When I fought Chukhadzhian, my whole mindset was ‘knockout’. You can’t go into a fight like that. When you’re having fun, the downtime is going to come,” says Ennis, giving his philosophy, which he has stated in numerous interviews.
Former WBA featherweight champion Raymond Ford (15-1-1, 8 KOs) will fight for the first time since losing his title to Nick Ball via a 12-round split decision earlier this year on June 1 in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. Arabia. We’ll see if the loss affected Ball Ford.
Orlando Gonzalez (23-2, 13 KOs) will be looking to send Ford down to his second straight loss on Saturday. This is not the ideal opponent for Ford to come back against.
