Jaron ‘Boots’ Ennis says he wants to be a four-division undisputed champion at 147, 154, 160 and 168 before he retires. However, it is unrealistic that Ennis (32-0, 29 KOs) will achieve even half of his goal.
IBF welterweight champion Ennis is approaching 28, holds just one title, and has no unification fights in sight for him. Boots’ promoter Eddie Hearn failed to secure a unification fight against WBO 147-lb champion Brian Norman Jr.
Hearn also complained about the financial demands of the other welterweight champions, who want to be paid well to take on the dangerous Boots. Ennis is not a PPV fighter, so there is no benefit for either champion to risk fighting him.
Some fans feel it Hearn is not willing to invest the money to negotiate the unification fights necessary for Boots Ennis to go uncontested at 147. As such, he will sit and age at welterweight and make low-level title defenses against fighters like Karen Chukhadzhian and David Avanesyan. To turn a fighter into a star, promoters need to invest initially if they want to quickly make a fighter a household name.
The cheap way to turn a fighter into a star is to match them against low-level opposition for a long period of 10+ years. That’s basically what Gervonta Davis’ promoters and management did.
It took 10+ years for Gervonta to become a star, and he’s nowhere near what he should be because of the poor matchups his management made. In Boots Ennis’s case, Hearn can’t afford it because he’s already close to 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. Additionally, Ennis lacks the one-hit power he has to destroy the soft opposition he is fielded.
“I want to be undisputed at 147, 154, 160 and 168. I have things I want to do outside of boxing as well. There are a lot of things that I have going on and a lot of things that I want to do, but I’m just focused on dealing with what I have in front of me first,” said Jaron ‘Boots’ Ennis. TBISE247 Sports about his goals in his career.
This sounds like a pathetic pipe dream that Boots Ennis has because he is not going to become an undisputed four-division champion. As things stand, Ennis won’t even be a one-division undisputed champion. If his promoter, Hearn, can’t invest in him to unify the 147-lb division, he will be spinning his wheels at welterweight for the rest of his career and will retire a one-belt champion.
