Eddie Hearn plans to revisit negotiations for a unification fight between IBF welterweight champion Jaron ‘Boots’ Ennis and WBO champion Brian Norman Jr. for next February.
Hearn came up empty with his recent talk of an Ennis vs. Norman Jr. fight. for Nov. 9, but plans to try later. Boots will defend against her IBF mandatory Karen Chukhadzhian (24-2 13 KOs) on November 9th at the Wells Fargo Center in Philadelphia.
Hearn hopes Ennis (32-0, 29 KOs) will knock out Chukhadzhian and look impressive to build a unification fight between Boots and the unbeaten Norman Jr. (26-0, 20 KOs) in February. He wants Ennis to stay at 147 until he unifies all the belts against Norman, WBC champion Mario Barrios, and WBA champion Eimantas Stanionis before moving up to 154.
Hearn will need to offer the three champions good enough money for them to agree to fight Ennis because he is waiting for “Boots” time if he expects them to accept low offers of less than $2 million.
Norman Jr., Barrios, and Stanionis showed no interest in agreeing to fight Ennis when Hearn tried to put those fights together. If Hearn can’t come up with the money to make those fights, he needs to advise Boots to move up to 154 because he’s wasting his time staying at 147 fighting lesser names.
“In an ideal world, we’d be fighting a unification fight rather than Chukhadzhian,” Eddie Hearn told Fight Hub TV about Jaron ‘Boots’ Ennis. “It’s not like he’s going to move up to 154 because he can’t make weight anymore.”
Hearn could have made the fight between Ennis and Norman Jr., but his idea of a big offer was not what the WBO champion and his father, Norman Sr., felt great about. Maybe Hearn is old-fashioned, but his $1.7 million offer was far short of the $2.2 million that Norman Sr. he wanted for his son.
Hearn was not willing to raise from the $500K needed to make this fight. There is a difference between what the champions at 147 consider good money and what Hearn thinks is optimal. Obviously, British promoter Hearn will need to understand how the champions work for him to get those fights from Ennis.
“So, I feel like with the conversations with Norman, with the fact that I don’t think that Stanionis is going to find a great fight,” said Hearn about the desire to make a unification fight between Ennis and the WBO welterweight champions Brian Norman Jr. and WBA champion and Eimantas Stanionis.
“Barrios is fighting on the Netflix card. I really feel that we can do these unifications. I don’t want to leave the division before doing them if he doesn’t have a physical need. So, my advice to Boots is to just do this fight (IBF mandatory Karen Chukhadzhian) out of the way.”
Hearn’s mention of Barrios fighting on Netflix and pretending to forget Norman Jr’s name doesn’t change the fact that they want more money than he’s willing to give.
If he doesn’t want to pay them what they’re asking, he needs to let Ennis know that he can’t fight for him. Hearn can’t turn Boots into a star on the cheap by pitting him against guys like Karen and David Avanesyan. He can hang on to Ennis his entire career, and he’ll never become a star if that’s the only type of fighter available.
“Try to stop him this time, jump on him, knock him out, and get him out of here and see one of the others, Brian Norman. See if he wants to make money to change lives in a unification fight. And s ‘he does, we’ll do this for February,’ said Hearn.
