Jaron ‘Boots’ Ennis says his inability to knock out Karen Chukhadzhian last year had nothing to do with what he was doing during his fight in Washington, DC.
Boots (32-0, 29 KOs) blames himself for going into the fight to try for a knockout instead of having fun like he normally does. Chukhadzhian (24-2, 13 KOs) took advantage of Ennis swinging wildly making him miss and landed irritating shots that hurt him.
IBF welterweight champion Ennis, 27, will have a chance to show fans that he can knock out #1 Chukhadzhian when they meet next month in a rematch on November 9th at the Wells Fargo Center in Philadelphia.
Chukhadzhian has a three-fight winning streak to earn the mandatory position to face Ennis again, and he will want to take advantage of this opportunity. Ennis feels that Chukhadzhian will try to be more aggressive this time because he did not win once last time, losing by scores of 120-108, 120-108 and 120-108.
This will be Ennis’ second fight for Eddie Hearn’s Matchroom, and it will look good because the British promoter is hyping him up with fans. Unfortunately, Ennis wasn’t impressive in his first fight under Hearn’s wing, getting hit hard by David Avanesyan on July 13. He won by a fifth-round KO, but it wasn’t a spectacular effort.
“It wasn’t him. It was me. My mind was, ‘I knocked him out.’ You can’t go into a fight like that thinking you’re just going to knock someone out,” Jaron Ennis told Brian Mazique about what happened in his previous fight against Karen Chukhadzhian last year.
“I went away without having my fun, and once I get back to having my fun, it’s going to be another knockout. In this next fight, I’m going to put on a show and not look for it. Let me just be myself. Don’t look for it not the knockout. As you saw with me having fun again in my last fight, the knockout came,” Ennis said of his bout against David Avanesyan last July.
It would be better if Ennis gave Chukhadzhian credit for making him look poor rather than putting it on himself for fighting a bad fight. The way Ennis talks, it sounds like he’s just making excuses and doesn’t know how to admit that he lacks the talent to do the job.
“He’s not going to change his style. He may be a little more. He tried to box in the last fight, but he didn’t win a round. I feel like he’s going to commit a little more this time, but I feel that once he is touched, he will be back on his bike,” said Ennis.
Chukhadzhian always fights in a defensive manner for every fight. Therefore, it is foolish for Ennis to assume that he will fight aggressively against him in the rematch. What Chukhadzhian will probably do is try to steal some rounds, and make Ennis look bad again. That will hurt his chances of getting a fight against Terence Crawford.
“It was me in the last fight. It was the things I did wrong, not him. He won since we fought, and it became the mandate. So, that’s how it happened,” said Ennis.
He looked like the same Jaron Ennis as usual, but he was facing a fighter with impressive defensive skills that were on par with Shakur Stevenson. Against a defensive artist like Chukhadzihian, Ennis has to fight very differently because he is not going to throw this guy swinging for the fences.
