Podhost Shawn Porter ripped into IBF welterweight champion Jaron ‘Boots’ Ennis, saying he’s “overrated” and needs to move up to 154 after his abysmal performance in his rematch against Karen Chukhadzhian on November 9th.
Porter doesn’t say how he thinks that Ennis will improve going up to 154, as that weight class is far better than the soft jobs that he’s been facing at 147 in that emptied-out, barren, lifeless desert.
Boots could move up to 154 for his next fight in February if he and his promoter, Eddie Hearn, agree to the Vergil Ortiz Jr. clash. That’s a make-or-break fight for the young Boots. Hearn may need to start thinking about dumping him if he loses because there will be no point in keeping Ennis.
Going up to 154 will push Boots Ennis into fights where he could get exposed rapidly and made to look far worse than he did in his two fights against Chukhadzhian and in his matches with David Avanesyan and Roiman Villa.
The former world champion Porter says that for all the hype about Boots Ennis’ career, he fought only once in 2022 against Custio Clayton and two fights in 2023 against Chukhadzhian and Roiman Villa. Now, we get the Karen rematch with Ennis (33-0, 29 KOs), in which he looked worse than the first fight with him.
Ennis had said since the fight with Chukhadzhian was signed that he was going to “Have my fun” and get a knockout. What a joke. He couldn’t do anything with the Ukrainian talent and was lucky that he gassed out.
If anything, Chukhadzhian is the one who improved dramatically and looked like the second coming of Floyd Mayweather Jr. with the pinpoint potshots he was hitting Boots with all night. He made Ennis look so bad that even his fans loudly booed him in his hometown at the Wells Fargo Center in Philadelphia.
“Boots is overrated. He had one fight in 2022 for all of the training that he does. 2 fights in 2023 for all of that training. He needs to move up to 154 lbs,” said Shawn Porter on his YouTube channel, ripping Jaron ‘Boots’ Ennis as being an “overrated” fighter.
Here’s the problem: If Boots moves up to 154, he’s going to have to face these killers, and they will do far worse to him than Chukhadzhian did:
– Terence Crawford
– Bakhram Murtazaliev
– Vergil Ortiz Jr.
– Tim Tszyu
– Charles Conwell
– Erickson Lubin
– Sebastian Fundora
– Serhii Bohachuk
The Ennis-Chukhadzhian scores were 119-107, 117-109 and 116-110. The fight was much closer than the scores the three judges who worked the contest turned in, but it wasn’t a shock that they scored it wide for Boots. This was his hometown, and they don’t get a lot of interesting fights in that city nowadays.
Punch Stats for Ennis vs. Chukhadzhian 2
– Ennis connected on 224 of 730 punches for 30.7%
– Chukhadzhian landed 173 of 522 punches for 33.1%
