Jaron Ennis: Lessons learned from the first Chukhadzhian fight

JARON ‘Boots’ Ennis goes into this weekend’s headliner knowing it’s time to erase Karen Chukhadzhian once and for all. Having already laboured across 12 tedious rounds with the Ukrainian, now back in front of the same bumper Wells Fargo crowd that cheered him on to a fifth-round KO of David Avanesyan in July, nothing less than a repeat performance will do.

“I’m definitely going to go in there and get the knockout, but I’m not going to look for it. I’m just going to let it come to me. Take my time and be myself,” Ennis, 32-0 (29 KOs), told Boxing News.

While the prospect of going back over old ground is so unappealing that even Ennis’ promoter, Eddie Hearn, voiced his displeasure at the IBF’s decision to bring back Karen, the champion has picked up pointers from the first fight to get it right the second time around.

“I learned to just listen to my team and don’t go in there looking for a knockout because you never get it. And this time around, I’m going to have fun and let it come to me.”

Boots revealed that he had gone back and watched the first fight to work on different methods to showcase to the Philadelphia crowd. The plan moving forward is to collect belts rather than drop them.

“If I was to drop the [IBF] belt now, I would have to try to get back in rankings for a WBC or a WBA or something like that. I feel like it was going backwards either way. So, like I said, I’m fine with just playing my mandatory being out of the way and then collecting the rest of these belts.”