By Dan Ambrose: Jaron ‘Boots’ Ennis became the first one to knockout Sergey Lipinets with his sixth-round single punch KO last Saturday night in their main event fight on Showtime Boxing from the Mohegan Sun in Uncasville, Connecticut.
The fight was halted at 2:11 of the sixth round moments after Ennis dropped Lipinets hard on his backside on the canvas. There was no way that Lipinets was going to be able to get back up and continue fighting with the way he was put down by Ennis.
Ennis showed that he’s for real last Saturday night, beating a solid welterweight that had never been stopped before. The downside of the performance is that Ennis may now have unwittingly scared away the top fighters at 147, which could make things difficult for him moving forward.
Lipinets never saw the shot that knocked him out
Ennis (27-0, 25 KOs) faked the former IBF light welterweight champion Lipinets (16-2-1, 12 KOs) out of position and then knocked him flat with a left hook to the head in the sixth round.
Ennis punished the Russian-born Lipinets with power shots, and he seemed to run away with the fight once he started fighting out of the southpaw stance more frequently.
It was the switching of stances, pin-point accuracy, and the mix of different punches that led to Ennis scoring a knockout over the normally durable Lipinets.
It was impressive with the number of shots that Lipinets was able to take without getting knocked out through the first five rounds. Ennis was unloading on Lipinets at will, but the tough Russian fighter took everything he dished out.
In the second round, Ennis connected with a textbook uppercut that put Lipinets down. That was only the second time in Lipinets’ seven-year professional career that he had been knocked down. Three years ago, the hard-hitting unbeaten Mikey Garcia dropped Lipinets in the seventh round in March 2018.
Lipinets eventually lost that fight to Mikey by a one-sided 12 round unanimous decision, but it was competitive all the way through it. Last night’s fight wasn’t in the least competitive, unfortunately. Ennis had his way with the 32-year-old Lipinets, showing the difference in classes between the two fighters.
Ennis had his way
In Lipinet’s loss to Mikey, he landed a lot of heavy blows that had him bleeding and his face bruised and swollen at the end. Against Ennis, Lipinets wasn’t able to effectively land his shots due to the Philadelphia native’s excellent head and upper body movement.
If there’s anything that you can call a negative about Ennis’ performance last night it’s how boring the fight was due to the lack of competitiveness.
It wasn’t just that, though. And it was also the way that Ennis defending every punch thrown at him, making sure that he didn’t get hit with anything. It was like watching Shakur Stevenson, a fighter that goes out of his way not to be hit by his opponents.
You want to see Ennis get hit with something at least to make the fight more entertaining, but that didn’t happen.
He was able to block or dodge most of the power shots that Lipinets threw at him during the six rounds of the fight, and that made it boring. Ennis is the opposite of an Arturo Gatti type of brawler.
He’s more like a combination of Pernell Whitaker and Shakur Stevenson, which is fine if your taste is to see fighters that don’t get hit.
Fighters that were popular in the past, guys like Muhammad Ali, Oscar De La Hoya, and Robert Duran, all got hit. That led to drama in their fights, and that was something that made them fun to watch.
After the fight, the 23-year-old Ennis made it known that he wants to challenge welterweight champions Terence ‘Bud’ Crawford and Errol Spence Jr for their titles.
Ennis wants world title shot in 2021
“I feel like I will be world champion by the end of this year or beginning of next year. Patience is the key though,” said Ennis.
It sounds like a pipedream on Ennis’ part about him challenging for a world title in 2021. That’s clearly not going to happen. IBF/WBC welterweight champion Errol Spence Jr is fighting in July, possibly against WBA champ Yordenis Ugas.
If Spence wins that fight, he’s got a lot of options against the PBC 147-pounders like Keith ‘One Time’ Thurman and Shawn Porter.
You’d have to believe that Spence (27-0, 21 KOs) would rather face WBO welterweight champion Crawford (37-0, 28 KOs) than he would Ennis because he’s well-known, there’s more money in that fight, and he’ll be given credit for a win.
With that said, Ennis talked of the likelihood of him needing to become the mandatory challenger to one of those fighters for him to get a world title shot.
In other words, Spence and Crawford aren’t going to just give Ennis a world title shot out of their own free will. It’s going to need to be a situation where they have no other choice.
In the case of Spence, it’s hard to say if he’ll agree to the fight with the Philadelphia native Ennis because he’s expected to move up to 154 soon, possibly in 2022.
Boots took his time
“I knew he’d be durable,” Ennis said about Lipinets. “That’s why I didn’t jump on the gas right away. I just took my time and broke him down.”
In the sixth round, Ennis came out firing power shots from every angle, putting a lot of steam into each punch. It was clear from the earliest movements of the round that Ennis intended on taking Lipinets out in this round.
Given all the punches that Ennis was landing, it would have taken a special fighter to survive the round. Someone with a better chin and a lot more power would have made Ennis second-guess before attacking that kind of fighter.
The question that boxing fans have about Ennis is whether he can handle getting hit back by someone with power.
We all know he can dish it out, but is he able to take huge shots from guys like Spence, Crawford, Shawn Porter, Thurman, or some of the other hard-hitting welterweights in the division.
“It’s on the up and up now. It’s onto bigger and better fights now,” said Ennis.
I wouldn’t get too confident about facing better opposition after this performance if I were Ennis. He was lucky to get the Lipinets fight, and he’s probably not going to motivate the promoters for the other top welterweights to put their fighters in with him.
If anything, Ennis will be avoided and maybe permanently. These reasons why Ennis will have problems getting fights:
- Switch-hitting
- Counter-punching ability
- High caliber defensive skills
- Power
- Lack of popularity
Ennis has got everything working against him for him to get the top fighters in the welterweight division to face him.
It’s likely that Ennis will be stuck fighting bottom dwellers in the division rather than getting fights against the top 10 guys that he and his promoters want him to face.
Realistic options for Ennis
- David Avanesyan
- Kell Brook
- Maurice Hooker
- Josesito Lopez
- Chris Kongo
It’s more likely that Ennis will be stuck fighting faded fighters or obscure bottom dwellers in the welterweight division until he becomes a mandatory challenger for one of the champions.
By the time that happens, Spence will be moving up to 154. That’s why it might be better for Ennis to focus on trying to become Crawfords mandatory with the WBO because he’s someone that won’t be moving up in weight, and he’s getting older.
Eimantas Stanionis defeats Thomas Dulorme
In the chief support bout last Saturday night, unbeaten welterweight Eimantas Stanionis (13-0, 9 KOs) defeated the experienced Thomas Dulorme (25-5-1, 16 KOs) by a 12 round unanimous decision in a WBA 147-lb title eliminator.
The scores were: 115-113, 116-112, and 117-111.
The win makes Stanionis the mandatory challenger to WBA welterweight champion Yordenis Ugas.