Trainer Stephen Edwards feels that Karen Chukhadzhian’s stock has gone up after the way Jaron ‘Boots’ Ennis obliterated WBA welterweight champion Eimantas Stanionis in a unification fight last Saturday night at the Boardwalk Hall in Atlantic City, New Jersey.
Edwards notes that Karen (24-3, 13 KOs) gave Boots (34-0, 30 KOs) a lot more problems than Stanionis. Chukhadzhian fought Ennis twice, changing his fighting style for the rematch and brawling with him, landing a lot of shots. He made Boots look very average with his ring IQ and with his slugging.
Chukhadzhian’s Rise
With Stanionis, he was no match for Ennis and was taken apart in an embarrassingly one-sided fight along with virtually the entire undercard. It was a night of sick mismatches on the card last Saturday.
What we don’t know is whether Boots is better than what he showed against Karen, because Stanionis was too poor of a fighter to tell us much. You can’t say for sure that Boots improved because his opponent looked awful, like a bottom-level contender.
Technically, Stanionis was a champion, but he captured his WBA belt beating a lesser fighter and was elevated by the sanctioning body to Super champ.
“On paper, Stanionis was his hardest fight, but special fighters have a way in their biggest moments making a guy look like they’re not so good,” said trainer Stephen Edwards to MillCity Boxing when asked if Eimantas Stanionis is Jaron ‘Boots’ Ennis’s hardest fight of his career.
Stanionis was supposed to be the hardest fight for Boots Ennis, but the people that thought that hadn’t looked closely enough at his past fights to see how limited he was. He’d looked terrible in his matches against Radzhab Butaev and Thomas Dulorme. Those were the toughest fights of his limited career.
“Looking back on it, Karen gave Boots more trouble, but we may be underestimating Karen. Maybe he didn’t have the promoters to put him at a certain name, but he can fight. We watched him fight Boots in two different styles, and after the fight, Boots got a lot of criticism.”
It’s obvious that people underestimated Chukhadzhian because he made Ennis look bad in two fights. It wasn’t just one fight where Ennid looked lost; he was clueless in both fights.
“So, maybe Karen is a little better than we give him credit for. In boxing, everybody is arrogant,” said Edwards. “If they don’t know the guy or know the guy’s opponent, then they automatically think they can’t fight. Well, just because you don’t know him doesn’t mean he can’t fight.”
Fan Judgments
The problem is that most boxing fans are of the casual variety, and the ones that are hardcore are too lazy or preoccupied with their lives to do research on fighters that they’re not familiar with. So when Ennis fought Chukhadzhian, a lot of fans made snap judgments, feeling it would be a walk in the park.
“Everybody is unknown until they become known. So, in boxing, you get a lot of arrogant commentary,” said Edwards. “If a guy is from another country, ‘Well, we don’t know him,’ then you don’t give him no credit. So, with Karen, nobody knew him. So, it was a way to devalue him, and it was a way to s*** on Boots. But he can obviously fight.
“He obviously has skills and is durable. He’s obviously very determined because he wanted to fight Boots twice. So, maybe Karen is good, and is a very good fighter, and we didn’t realize it,” said Edward about Chukhadzhian.
