By Huck Allen: Young star Jaron ‘Boots’ Ennis (30-0, 27 KOs) was less than pleased with his performance last Saturday night against the crafty #4 IBF Karen Chukhadzhian (21-2, 11 KOs), despite winning a wide 12 round unanimous decision to pick up the vacant interim International Boxing Federation welterweight title.
Ennis won by the scores 120-108, 120-108, and 120-108, but he failed to dominate Chukhadzhian in the manner in which he needed to show the boxing world that he was ready to challenge IBF/WBA/WBC welterweight champion Errol ‘The Truth’ Spence Jr and WBC champ Terence ‘Bud’ Crawford for their belts.
After the bout, Jaron Ennis expressed regret, feeling that he should have put more pressure on Chukhadzhian and thrown more punches to make it a more one-sided fight than it already had been.
Spence says he felt more relaxed in the middle rounds where he was “having fun,” yet he still looked less than stellar during that part of the fight, and certainly not on the level of the big dogs at welterweight, Spence Jr and Crawford.
Spence & Crawford would have quickly solved Chukhadzhian’s Rubik’s Cube fighting style and knocked him out, no matter how much running he would have done to survive against those two.
There’s no way that Chukhadzhian could have run for 12 rounds against Spence and Crawford without getting knocked out at some point along the way, which is why it’s troubling that Boots Ennis looked so lost with the puzzle that he presented for him last Saturday night.
Boots Ennis filled with regret
“I should have picked it up a little bit more and stepped on the gas a little bit more, throw a little bit more punches, but it’s experience. That’s what comes with the game,” ‘Boots’ Ennis at the post-fight press conference last Saturday night, discussing what he should have done against the clever boxer Chukhadzhian.
There’s nothing Boots Ennis can do about it now but learn from his performance and figure out how to make adjustments during his future fights.
The fact that Boots failed to make one adjustment against Chukhadzhian is disappointing because he should have been able to quickly figure out how to solve the style presented to him by Chukhadzhian.
If Boots Ennis is incapable of making adjustments, then he needs to pump the brakes and slow down in his hurry to fight Spence & Crawford because, against those guys, he’s going to need to autocorrect many times in the contests for him to have a chance of winning.
“You got a guy that really didn’t come to fight. So that’s why I told my son to walk him down and try and make him fight, but he still didn’t want to fight,” said trainer Derek ‘Bozy’ Ennis at the post-fight press conference about what he was trying to get Jaron ‘Boots’ Ennis to do for him to make adjustments against the safety-first fighting style of Chukhadzhian.
Bozy sounds helpless here and fails to take ownership of the mistakes Boots Ennis made against Chukhadzhian.
“Ain’t nothing we could do about that, so the only thing we could do is keep doing what he was doing,” said Bozy. “We won every round, and I’m glad we went twelve rounds. You see that he [Boots Ennis] wasn’t even tired. Maybe these guys will fight him.
“He only fought once last year. We normally stay busy with two or three fights a year,” said Bozy, pointing out that Jaron Ennis only fought once in 2022, knocking out Custio Clayton in the second round last May. “Everyone is waiting around to see what Spence & Crawford is going to do.”
As you can see, this is more pathetic excuses from Bozy and showing no interest in wanting to confront the reality of what happened. The two were both exposed as a team by Chukhadzhian and shown as incapable of changing their battle plans during a tactical fight.
“You see, everybody was waiting. You had Stanionis waiting, Thurman waiting,” said Bozy. “You had all those top guys waiting, [Vergil] Ortiz, all those guys waiting. That’s why we didn’t get all the fights that we normally get. He still wasn’t rusty, though.
“What’s good about going twelve rounds is that you know you can go that many rounds. A lot of people say he never went past six rounds, but he displayed that tonight. He showed that he can go twelve rounds or more. You saw that he wasn’t gassed for air or nothing, and look how long he was chasing the guy.
“The guy was running, and he was chasing him. I’m glad he got the rounds in, like I said, to let everybody know that he can go the twelve rounds with no sweat.
“Oh yeah, because people are so used to seeing him knock them out. That’s what I’m saying,” said Bozy when asked why he stated that he thinks other fighters will now want to fight Boots Ennis after his performance against Karen.
“Now, they’ll probably say, ‘We got him now. He didn’t knock this guy out. He was supposed to knock this guy out.’ But how can you knock a guy out like that if he keeps on running and didn’t want to engage? That’s the truth. You see, we wanted to fight.
“Nobody ever really tested him, and I want everybody to see that he has been tested, so guys like Crawford & Spence, to let them know that we’re right there with you. We’re on the same level or maybe over that level,” said Bozy Ennis.