Jaron Ennis Must Keep His IBF Belt: Life Would Be Hard At 154

IBF welterweight champion Jaron ‘Boots’ Ennis (32-0, 29 KOs) is better off staying at 147 rather than venturing up to 154 to gamble in the shark-infested waters in that deep division. Staying at 147 is Boots Ennis’ best shot at becoming a star, and he has a much better chance of staying unbeaten longer than if he moves up.

It doesn’t matter if Ennis never unifies the welterweight division. Just holding onto his one piece of real estate with his IBF belt is about the same as capturing the other belts against obscure, no-talent champions at holding those belts.

The casual fans have no clue who Mario Barrios, Eimantas Stanionis, and Brian Norman Jr. are. So, there’s no gain for Boots to unify the division against these little known belt-holders. Those fighters might as well be holding trinket titles because the casual fans don’t know who they are, and it’s doubtful they ever will.

“Karen was asking for this fight. He went through the process to make this happen. He was fighting in those stupid IBF eliminators that put you in a position to get this kind of opportunity,” said Chris Mannix to DAZN Boxing about Karen Chukhadzhian wanting the rematch with IBF welterweight champion Jaron ‘Boots’ Ennis.

“I don’t blame him for it because he’s probably getting paid six what he got paid for his last couple of fights. The real problem is a sanctioning body that allows something like this to happen. That allows a guy that got his [backside] kicked over 12 rounds to fight a few low-level fights to be right back in position to be the mandatory challenger,” Mannix continued about Chukhadzhian.

Of course, Chukhadzhian wanted the rematch with Boots Ennis because that’s a title shot and a guaranteed nice payday for way more money than what he was getting fighting the 24 scrubs he beat to build his 24-2 record. If the International Boxing Federation is going to make it easy for fighters to become mandatory challengers without fighting anyone dangerous, why wouldn’t Chukhadzhian take advantage of it?

“They did kick the tires at 154. They [Team Ennis] talked about a Charles Conwell fight,” said Mannix about Ennis and his team considering a move up to 154 but then changing their minds. “They talked about fighting other guys at 154. There just wasn’t a big fight out there for him at 154, and right now, that belt is currency. If you are a champion, you can do some things with it.”

What Mannix isn’t saying is that the fights that Ennis could get would be very hard and risky ones that he could lose. Indeed, there aren’t any popular fighters at 154 that would guarantee Boots Ennis a huge mega-million payday. However, what’s also true is that there are fighters at 154 that could potentially beat Ennis, and they do it brutally by knocking him out. Ennis could get knocked out if he moved up and fought these big punchers:

– Serhii Bohachuk
– Bakhram Murtazaliev
– Israil Madrimov
– Vergil Ortiz Jr.
– Sebastian Fundora
– Charles Conwell

We saw what ‘Little GGG’ Madrimov did to Terence Crawford. He beat the stuffing out of the Omaha, Nebraska native, messing up his face so bad that he looked he’d been run over. Whatever ambition Crawford once had about becoming the undisputed champion at 154 was driven out of him by the punishment he took against Madrimov.

Boots Ennis would get the same treatment, but he might not hold up. He wouldn’t run around the ring like Crawford did to survive Madrimov’s big punches. Ennis would actually try to fight, and that could end badly for him.

“You can look at it and say, ‘Alright, Brian Norman. Alright, Stanionis. Alright, Barrios. It’s 2025. Let’s start fresh, get these negotiations, and make these unifications happen. The pathway for the biggest fights for Boots still involves him having that belt,” said Mannix.

Holding onto the IBF title doesn’t guarantee that Ennis will get unification fights against any of those champions without his promoter, Eddie Hearn, coming up with the bread to interest those champs to fight him. Hearn hasn’t shown the desire to pay the kind of money that the other champions are asking for to face Boots.

If Ennis vacates his IBF title and moves up to 154, there’s no guarantee that he’s going to be the same fighter in that division. They hit harder at junior middleweight, and the division is stacked with fighters who have the same kind of talent as Ennis. That might be the reason why Ennis and his father have chosen not to give up the IBF belt.

They know that life could be difficult at 154, and Ennis may fall apart once he starts tasting the power of the killers  Bakhram Murtazaliev, Israil Madrimov, Vergil Ortiz Jr, and Serhii Bohachuk. You can count the old timer, Terence Crawford because he’s clearly given up fighting the young talent after getting a taste of how powerful and hungry they are at 154 in his fight against Madrimov on August 3rd. Crawford is now just waiting for a handout from Canelo Alvarez. If he doesn’t get that fight, he’ll likely retire.