By: Sean Crose
“I feel like my talent and my skills do enough,” Jaron “Boots” Ennis said to FightHype in a video interview posted on Wednesday. “I’m not with the talking.” With twenty-nine wins, no losses and twenty-seven knockouts on his resume, one might assume that Ennis could simply let his fists do the talking. This is the roaring 2020’s, however, an era where a big mouth is often more lucrative than big talent, which is probably at least part of the reason why Ennis has yet to throw down with one of the welterweight division’s big names.
“I want to fight all these guys and they know that,” said the Philadelphia native. “I feel like they try to go around me. They can’t do that for too long, though.” Although most fans would no doubt love to see Ennis square off against the likes of Errol Spence or Terence Crawford, those two fighters, who sit atop of the welterweight division, have yet to even fight each other. Still, Ennis feels that, should he get past the widely unknown Karen Chukhadzhian on January 7th, he may indeed get a chance to meet Spence in the ring. “That could be next,” he said.
In the meantime, the man will unfortunately have to wait. “They gotta do something,” he said of the division’s current kings. “I feel like they’re holding it up a little bit.” He may not be a world titlist, but with close to thirty fights under his belt, Ennis is confident that he can take any of the big names at welterweight. “I really know this boxing game to a T,” he said. “I ain’t all talk. I’m only biting.” And the incredible skill sets fighters like Spence and Crawford possess? “I feel like the better the competition is, the better I’m going to be,” said Ennis.
As for his next opponent, Ennis is confident. “I’m not too worried at all, but I know he’s probably a good fighter,” he said of Chukhadzhian. Ennis was then asked how he would deal with Chukhadzhian’s eastern European style of fighting. “Pressure,” he responded. “Moving your head. Keeping you (your opponent) off balance.” As an indication of how seriously he takes every fight, Ennis made it clear that he hasn’t exactly been keeping his fingers on the pulse as far as the latest fights go. He didn’t watch Crawford’s destruction of David Gavrushevich Avanesyan last weekend, after al. “I’m locked in,” he said. “I’m in camp. I’m not focused on nothing else.”