Jaron ‘Boots’ Ennis says he wants to be an undisputed four-division champion at 147, 154, 160 and 168 before he retires. However, it is not realistic that Ennis (32-0, 29 KOs) will achieve even half of his goal.
IBF welterweight champion Ennis is approaching 28 years old, holds just one title, and there are zero unification fights in sight for him. Boots promoter Eddie Hearn has failed to negotiate a unification fight against WBO 147-lb champion Brian Norman Jr. after choosing not to sweeten the offer by $500K to make the deal.
Hearn also complained about the financial demands of other champions at welterweight, who want to be paid well to take the dangerous boots. Ennis is not a PPV fighter, so there is no advantage for any of the champions to want to risk fighting him.
Some fans feel that way Hearn is not willing to invest the money to negotiate the unification battles necessary for Boots Ennis to become undisputed at 147. As such, he will sit and age at welterweight, making low-level title defenses against fighters such as Karen Chukhadzhian and David Avanesyan . To turn a fighter into a star, promoters have to invest initially if they want to quickly make a fighter a household name.
The economic way to turn a fighter into a star is to match low-level opposition for an extended period of 10+ years. That’s basically what Gervonta Davis’ promoters and management did.
It took more than 10 years for Gervonta to become a star, and it is not close to what it should have been because of the weak match-making that his management has done. In the case of Boots Ennis, Hearn cannot afford to do that because he is already close to 28 years old and has only one world title. Ennis is not young enough to take Tank Davis’ long-term path to becoming a PPV attraction. Also, Ennis doesn’t have the punching power he needs to destroy the soft opposition he’s fed.
“I want to be undisputed at 147, 154, 160 and 168. I’ve got things I want to do outside of boxing as well. There’s a lot of things I’ve done and a lot of things I want to do, but I’m just focused on dealing with what I have in front of me first,” said Jaron ‘Boots’ Ennis to TBISE247 Sports about his goals in his career.
It seems like a pathetic pipe dream that Boots Ennis has because he won’t become an undisputed four-division champion. The way I see things, Ennis won’t even be the undisputed champion of a division. If his promoter, Hearn, can’t invest in him to unify the 147lb division, he’ll be spinning his wheels at welterweight for the rest of his career and retiring a belt.
