Glove2Face

Saturday night, 1/7/2023, Jaron “Boots” Ennis (30W-0L-27KO’s) defeated Karen Chukhadzhian (21W-2L-11KO’s) in the Capital One Arena in Washington DC on the undercard of the Gervonta Davis vs Hector Luis Garcia fight. He won by unanimous decision in a contest that was expected by many, to be a fairly easy fight for Ennis, but Chukhadzhian didn’t seem to have gotten the memo.

The fight was competitive from round one until the end, with small flickers of Ennis being aggressive, but never really controlling the fight like he has in the past. A win is a win, no matter how ugly or tough it was, so you can’t take anything away from it, but at this point of his career, and the “risk vs reward” climate of the sport, he has to know that it’s go big or go home, especially if you talk big!

Ennis has made statements about potentially fighting the current titleholders in the welterweight division, Errol “The Truth” Spence Jr (28W-0L-22KO’s) and Terence “Bud” Crawford (39W-0L-30KO’s) and unfortunately for him, plans of being a feasible opponent for either of them means he’ll need to show out every time he gets in the ring.

I’m not one that believes you can value a fighter off of one outing, good or bad, but the sport has turned into a gutter of money ravenous squads that will avoid tougher opponents if 1) the difficulty of the fight isn’t worth the money, or 2) the fans, and powers that be, don’t necessitate it!

Ennis is undeniably a top fighter in the division but it takes more than skills to pull off a successful PPV and fights like this is one that can hypothetically stall/delay his chances at getting a shot at the titles.

To add to his lack of supremacy, he also displayed cavities in his defense that left him being hit often and offensive decisions that put him in questionable positions that a fighter like Spence or Crawford would’ve exploited with potential night ending ramifications. He threw caution to the wind a few times that left him drastically open for counters that would’ve definitely fed a harder puncher than Chukhadzhian.

Was this fight not taken serious enough which turned into frustration and desperation? Is that why Ennis lunged in and exposed himself unnecessarily?

I am not predicting that Ennis would lose to either of the top fighters, but I will predict that he probably won’t get a fight with either of them in the foreseeable future.

Luckily, he’s only 25 years old and has a lot of years left to prove his worth, but if he’s going to use a tough-talk persona to make matches, he’ll need to realize he’ll be evaluated every time he steps in the ring, even when he wins.

After that has been said, in all actuality, Chukhadzhian could simply be better than many thought and was the reason for the lackluster outing by Ennis, but time will tell if there’s any truth to that!