Matchroom announced today that Jaron ‘Boots’ Ennis and Jesse ‘Bam’ Rodriguez will share a card in a doubleheader on November 9, live on DAZN. The event will take place at the Wells Fargo Center in Philadelphia.
Ennis (32-0, 29 KOs) will headline, defending his IBF welterweight title in a rematch against incumbent Karen Chukhadzhian. It’s a questionable headliner due to the lack of fan interest in the “Boots” Ennis vs. Chukhadzhian rematch, but promoter Eddie Hearn hopes to turn Philadelphia native Jaron into a star.
Hearn recently lost the scholarship bid for Ennis-Chukhadzhian, which begs the question: how did Hearn get Chukhadzhian’s management to agree to have the fight in Philadelphia rather than Germany?
Hearn will likely have to pay a princely sum to get Chukhadzhian to agree to fight in Philadelphia. In the end, Hearn might have been better off putting the money to win the scholarship offer, and he wouldn’t have had to deal with paying to make Team Chukhadzhian fight in Philly.
He has his work cut out for him due to the absence of notable fighters at 147 and his willingness to pay champions to agree to fight Ennis. They will not accept lowball offers for fights that have little chance of winning to come to Philadelphia.
British promoter Hearn needs to understand American fighters because he doesn’t seem to understand how Americans work.
Hearn recently failed to negotiate a deal with WBO welterweight champion Brian Norman Jr. when he faced softening the agreement by $500,000 from 1.7 million to 2.2 million for a unification meeting. Team Norman was willing to accept the $1.7 million to fight Ennis in Las Vegas, but Hearn did not agree to the offer.
Hearn thinks that after Boots fights Karen, Team Norman will see the light and agree to his offer. I seriously doubt it. If anything, his price will likely jump to $3 million after Norman Jr. destroys Derrieck Cuevas on November 8, and looks like a golden idol in that performance.
It is important that Hearn does a better job of competing with Ennis because he will have a poor start with him fighting David Avanesyan and now Chukhadzhian. With the way things are going, Ennis is going in the same direction as Demetrius Andrade, a former Matchroom fighter, who Hearn faced against weak opposition and failed to advance his career.
WBC super flyweight champion ‘Bam’ Rodriguez (20-0, 13 KOs) defends against Pedro Guevara (42-4-1, 22 KOs) in the co-feature. Fans on social media believe that the fight of Rodriguez vs. Guevara should be the real headliner because there is more interest in that match-up than the main event disagreement between Boots and Chukhadzhian.
Ennis already beat that guy by a 12-round unanimous decision a year ago on January 7th, winning by scores of 120-108, 120-108 and 120-108.
