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Jaron ‘Boots’ is doing well as the IBF welterweight champion, facing nondescript opposition for Eddie Hearn’s Matchroom, but I don’t think he’s got a chance if he chooses to move up to face Bakhram Murtazaliev for his IBF junior middleweight title.
Ennis (32-0, 29 KO) is spinning his wheels at 147, hoping that someday he’ll become the undisputed champion in the division. He’ll eventually figure out that he’ll never get the chance to fight for any of the welterweight titles due to the combination of the other champions’ financial demands and network and promotional issues.
For Ennis’ sake, he needs to wake up and understand that his promoter, Hearn, won’t be able to make the fights that he needs for him at welterweight to accomplish his goal. He needs to move up while he still has youth left.
Murtazaliev (23-0, 17 KOs) would likely indulge Boots by giving him a shot at his IBF belt if the money was right. It wouldn’t be the fight that Murtazaliev wants, but he’s going to be avoided by the other 154-lb champions after what he did to former WBO champ Tim Tszyu last Saturday night in Orlando, Florida.
Murtazaliev will be avoided by the plague by the other champions now. It’ll be far worse than it was before when champions were giving Murtazaliev step-aside deals so they could avoid him.
Why Murtazaliev beats Ennis:
– Skills
– Work rate
– Power
– Experience
Ennis is a capable fighter at 147, but he’s not shown out-of-this-world power, and he gets hit a lot. We saw how Boots went life and death with the heavy-handed Roiman Villa last year on July 8th.
Ennis took a career’s worth of punishment against Villa. Moreover, Boots was made to look like he had two left feet by Karen Chukhadzhian in their 12-round fight in January 2023. Boots looked so bad in that fight that people are still talking about it to this day.
Murtazaliev’s power would play a huge factor in why he would destroy Boots Ennis. He’s naturally a big puncher. Ennis also has good power, but it’s not extreme like Murtazaliev’s.
Normally, it takes Boots many rounds for him to score knockouts, and that’s against the lower-level opposition his management has matched him against. It recently took Boots ten rounds to knockout Roiman Villa. In Roiman’s last fight on September 14th, he was knocked out in the 3rd round by Ricardo Salas Rodriguez. That guy isn’t a major player at 147.
Boots is going to have to take some risks with his career sooner or later by moving up to 154 because he’s going nowhere at 147. His promoter, Hearn, has already reached a dead end trying to get the other champions to fight him, and he’s not shown that he wants to meet their asking price. If Boots moves up, he can face Murtazaliev and show the boxing world what he can do against a fighter who so easily wiped out Tszyu.
If Ennis were to conquer Murtzaliev, his career would shoot through the roof because the Russian’s popularity is sky-high after the way he demolished Tszyu. Beating Murtazaliev now would be worth 100 victories over Karen Chukhadzhian, and that’s the kind of opposition that he’s going to be stuck fighting if he chooses to stay at 147 with his hopeless dream of one day in the far distant future, capturing the undisputed championship.
A battle between Ennis and Murtazalev would be seen as a 50-50 match. Fans would be excited about watching the contest because it would be like a monster movie. Instead of Boots fighting the random guys that his promoter Hearn digs up for him, he’ll be facing someone who could beat him.
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