2 weeks Ago By Tom Gray
On January 7, 2023, Jaron "Boots" Ennis scored a shutout 12-round unanimous decision win over Karen Chukhadzhian at Capitol One Arena in Washington to lift the vacant IBF welterweight title. What do we mean by shutout? All three judges scored the bout 120-108 or twelve rounds to zero. Thirty-six scoring chances and Chukhadzhian didn’t win a single one of them.
Without a knockdown or a knockout, this is as dominant a whitewash as any fighter can produce. WATCH: Jaron Ennis vs. Karen Chukhadzhian 2, live on DAZN It therefore may come as a surprise to you that the pair are scheduled to fight a rematch at Wells Fargo Center in Philadelphia on November 9.
To be clear, there was no controversy the first time around – it was a decisive victory and the case was closed. The Sporting News looks into the reasons why Boots Ennis has to go over old ground against a fighter he thoroughly dominated. Why is Boots Ennis fighting Karen Chukhadzhian again? Chukhadzhian is the IBF mandatory challenger.
If Boots didn’t accept the rematch, then he would have been stripped of his world title. At this point, it’s hard enough to match the super-skilled Philly favorite against an elite-level operator simply because he’s an exceptional talent. Boots’ world title is the only serious leverage he has to entice the big names, so he has no choice but to appease the IBF.
MORE: SN's top-12 best pound-for-pound boxers How did Karen Chukhadzhian become the IBF mandatory challenger? That’s a great question. Since losing to Boots, Chukhadzhian has won three fights over the past 22 months. He scored a second-round TKO over journeyman Michel Marcano, who is 5-5 in his last 10 starts.
Chukhadzhian then halted unheralded Italian Pietro Rossetti in nine to claim a meaningless IBF trinket that gave him an undeserved rankings boost. It should be noted that Rosetti has had two fights since and lost them both. Finally, Chukhadzhian won a 12-round unanimous decision over Harry Scarff, who is operating on and around British title level.
Does this trio of wins justify another world title opportunity? You decide. To be clear, it’s not that the Ukrainian contender is a bad fighter – he most certainly is not – but he’s out of his depth in this matchup and that’s a fact. The only thing the 28-year-old could brag about following the fight in January 2023 is that he was the first opponent to go the distance with Boots in almost six years.
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