Promoter Eddie Hearn is confident he can put together a unification fight for Jaron ‘Boots’ Ennis and one of the other champions at 147 in the first quarter of 2025.
Boots (32-0, 29 KOs) has a title defense of her IBF welterweight belt against mandatory Karen Chukhadzhian on November 9 in Philadelphia. After that fight, Ennis’ next contest will be to fight one of the champions.
“We ran a business,” Eddie Hearn told Fight Hub TV when asked why he lost the purse bid for the Jaron ‘Boots’ Ennis fight against Karen Chukhadzhian. “At the number we offer, we have already made a huge investment in that fight. Also, he (Boots) has minimum.
“People don’t understand the purse offer. A fighter has a minimum in his contract, and sometimes the offer is less than the minimum because you don’t want to overpay the opponent, and Chukhadzhian is already overpaid” , Hearn said.
This time, Boots Ennis was lucky that Hearn was able to make a deal with Chukhadzhian’s management so they could agree to fight in Philadelphia. But if Hearn continues to lose the scholarship offer for the Boots Ennis fights, he will end up fighting all over the world, and eventually it could lead to him losing. Visiting fighters often find it difficult to win decisions against hometown guys. Hearn needs to do a better job of winning the stock market bid for Boots.
“So, we sat down with Jaron and he said, ‘Look, this is the number we’re comfortable with offering,'” Hearn said. “Financially, it’s already a disaster for us, but we’re going to support it. Let’s try to make this fight. Its promoters have come up with this crazy offer.
“Now, whether they could have done it or not, I reached out to them and said, ‘Look, what do you want to do?’ Where do you want to do this fight? Do you want to do it? Do you have the facilities for that, or do you want to work together and do it with us? And we made an agreement to do it together,” Hearn said.
If Boots had ended up fighting Karen in Germany or Ukraine, that would have been interesting. Hearn would have been criticized big time by the fans, especially if Boots lost.
“The reason we decided to do this fight is because I had a very frank and honest conversation with Jaron Ennis, who told me, ‘My dream in boxing is to unify the division and win multiple belts in the division’ . He’s going to do this at 154, and he’s going to do this at 160,” Hearn said.
If Boots isn’t confident he can win at 154, he should stay where he is, fighting no-name guys at 147, and hope that when he’s Crawford’s age at 37, he’ll become a star. It took until his 15th year as a professional to become popular because he was fighting opposition that casual fans had never heard of.
“I asked him and Bozy a simple question. ‘Do you need to get to 154 physically? How do you make the weight? And they said, ‘That easy.’ I’m like, ‘Then we need to unify.'” Well, but this fight.’ “I know, but sometimes you have to do things,” Hearn said. People have to understand the journey.”
Boots can probably stay at welterweight for years, but that doesn’t mean they should. His career would take off much faster if he went up to 154 now and started fighting guys like Vergil Ortiz, Tim Tszyu, Serhii Bohachuk and Israil Madrimov.
There’s no point in Boots staying at 147 if Hearn can’t come up with the money to pay the other champions what they want. If $1.7 million is Hearn’s sticking point, he’s never going to get all three welterweight champions to agree to fight Boots. They know their chances of winning are slim. So, of course, they will ask for a lot of money because they are better off keeping their world titles unless they are paid a lot.
“‘We’re going to deal with this guy, and then we’re going to unify.’ When I looked at the other champions. If it was Spence and all these other champions. They don’t have to fight him. It’s Norman. It’s Stanionis,” Hearn said.
“Boots is the biggest fight for all those guys. Sooner or later, one of those guys will realize that he has to take the fight. They are the ones who will be paid, and I am convinced that we can do that unification in the first quarter of 2025” , said Hearn.
For Hearn to be confident of making a unification, it must mean that he is willing to pay a lot of money because he will not get any of the champions to agree to fight Boots without paying the dollar. WBO welterweight champion Brian Norman Jr. he wanted $2.2 million to fight Boots, but Hearn wouldn’t go above $1.7 million.
“So, I made the decision to pay. I made the decision to double down on the card. To bring in Bam. To put Ray Ford in a really good fight. To put Khalil Coe. It’s a brilliant card. Sometimes, you just wipe your mouth and go, ‘It is what it is. Let’s win this fight, and we should try to unify in 2025.’
“So once we do that, let’s go again and try to unify again and try to become indisputable. But at least once before we go to 154.
“I believe that when Jaron wins in November and unifies the division, it will be very difficult for Terence to avoid that fight, unless he retires from the sport because Boots will become bigger and bigger. Once he unifies, there will be a real moment for that fight, but it may take His Excellency to put up the money for Crawford to say, “Okay, I’ll do it.”
Hearn does not consider the time needed for Ennis to fulfill his goal of becoming the undisputed welterweight champion. Without the Matchroom boss willing to offer crazy money to the three champions at 147, it could take Boots two or more years to achieve their goal.
By then, Crawford will either be retired or beaten by one or more of the 154 lb. fighters. He is already showing his age and was lucky to win his junior middleweight debut against Israil Madrimov.
“They’re not going to want to do it. Nobody really wants to fight Boots, let’s be honest,” Hearn said.
Of course, the welterweight champions are not going to want to fight Boots. Again, without Hearn throwing him crazy money, they and their promoters want nothing to do with Ennis. It’s the same with Hearn and his other fighters.
He wasn’t throwing vulnerable people like Edgar Berlanga with fighters he couldn’t beat before pitting him against Canelo Alvarez for the mega bucks. He wasn’t going to take chances with Berlanga. It’s the same with other fighters who don’t want to face Boots Ennis. They won’t unless Hearn digs deep and pays whatever his asking price is.
