Jaron ‘Boots’ Ennis says his inability to knockout Karen Chukhadzhian last year had nothing to do with what he was doing during their fight in Washington, D.C.
Boots (32-0, 29 KOs) blames it on himself because he went into the fight trying for a knockout instead of having fun the way he normally does. Chukhadzhian (24-2, 13 KOs) took advantage of Ennis swinging wildly by making him miss and landing irritating shots that made him look bad.
IBF welterweight champion Ennis, 27, will have the chance to show fans that he can knock #1 Chukhadzhian out 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 didn’t win a round last time, losing by the scores 120-108, 120-108, and 120-108.
This will be Ennis’ second fight for Eddie Hearn’s Matchroom, and he’s got to look good because the British promoter has been hyping him up with fans. Unfortunately, Ennis wasn’t impressive in his first fight under Hearn’s wing, getting hit a lot by David Avanesyan on July 13th. He won by a fifth-round knockout, but it wasn’t a spectacular effort.
“It wasn’t him. It was me. My mindset was, ‘I’m knocking him out.’ You can’t go into a fight like that thinking that you’re just going to knock somebody out,” said Jaron Ennis to Brian Mazique about what happened in his previous fight against Karen Chukhadzhian last year.
“I went away from me not having my fun, and once I go 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. Just let me be myself. Do not look for the knockout. As you saw with me going back to having my fun in my last fight, the knockout came,” said Ennis about his clash against David Avanesyan last July.
It would come off better if Ennis just gave Chukhadzhian credit for having made him look poor rather than putting it on himself for fighting a bad fight. The way Ennis is talking, he 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 might be a little bit more. He tried to box in the last fight, but he didn’t win a round. I feel like he’s going to engage a little bit more this time, but I feel once he gets touched, he’s going to be back on his bike,” said Ennis.
Chukhadzhian always fights in a defensive manner for every fight. So, it’s silly for Ennis to assume that he’s going to fight aggressively against him in the rematch. What Chukhadzhian will likely do is try and steal some rounds, and make Ennis look bad again. That would hurt his chances of getting a fight against Terence Crawford.
“It was up to me in the last fight. It was things I did wrong, not him. He’s been winning ever since we fought, and he became the mandatory. So, that’s how that happened,” said Ennis.
It 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 got to fight a lot differently because he’s not going to knock this guy out by swinging for the fences.
