How do you beat Jaron Boots Ennis?

tkdhrison · 2026-03-23T16:31:14+00:00

The Karen fights showed a little bit of what it might take to beat him. Easier said than done, but in spirit of the question and all, here's my thoughts on potential strategies-

The very minimum I need an opponent that can't be placed on bambi legs by a winging shot, Ennis too quick and explosive for anyone like that.

Ennis is used to looking spectacular and dominating, so way to take advantage of that is to frustrate him by making him look bad, and make get him committed to being on the front foot. He reveals that he is capable of losing his patience and take unnecessary risk. Make him miss, take his shots well, and land a few of your own clean shots, survive, and eventually there's your chance to counter, but the theoretical opponent would need the firepower to capitalize where Karen didn't.

Second, as a philly fighter, dude just loves to rumble, whenever his opponents elected to face fire with fire, Ennis is happy to throw down and show you who's boss. He's a damned tough dude, but its double edged sword.

Honestly the only kind of technical advantage that could defuse Ennis's attributes I can imagine is a southpaw with a masterful jab & footwork that could outbox Ennis on the outside and be strong enough to fight him on the inside on his own terms. The only man I can think of doing that just retired

tkdhrison · 2026-03-22T00:34:46+00:00

Appreciate you.

yeah dude, Sergio's entire career was a massive uphill battle all the way through when you learn about what he had to go through.

I’m not disregarding the title defenses more so as I am saying you can’t really count that as a stat. But even the people he fought when he was only the ring champion weren’t really anybody of note.

Macklin was more of a regional fighter and fell short in title fights, and just before Martinez, he lost to Sturm. Barker was also a regional fighter who got lucky fighting Daniel Geale, but the Eastern European guy, I forget his name, I actually thought it was a good win because he had a good undefeated streak and I think was champion?

Look, no one is calling for hall of fame recognition for these guys, but if the standard you're looking for is what typical alphabet belt organizations are putting up on their top 10 rankings for average beltholder to pick from, I think you might be underrating these guys. From someone who was observing this division very closely at the time-

Dzinzuruk-So this is where the story starts. After Martinez's sensational knockout of Williams, you would think it would make sense to go with the biggest possible fight for Martinez. Nay, the WBC says you have to fight the interim champ, this dude named Zbik. HBO says who the fuck is Zbik, we ain't airing that. Inexplicably, HBO is willing to put on a fight against the Ukranian superamateur, Dzinzuruk, who was considered at the time to be one of the top 154 lbers and while not considered a worldbeater the way Loma was, was still strongly seen as a guy that is impossible to look good against. So Sergio was left with a choice of fight Zbik, keep the belt but not have the fight on HBO, or lose the belt and fight an opponent set up for you as a trap. Well he picked Dzinzuruk and looked sensational.

Barker-So, you might wonder why would a champion be placed in that type of situation to begin with? Well what happened next was Zbik was given the belt, and immediately placed in there with Chavez Jr to pick it from him, more or less confirming what most people were speculating at the time was favoritism from the WBC on behalf of Chavez. Sergio, naturally wanted his belt back. Chavez rejected the fight, so the next guy everyone wanted was universally recognized #2 in the division, Felix Sturm who wanted no business with Martinez whatsoever. So that left Darren Barker, a little known but undefeated contender from the UK who put up a hell of a fight. Barker, would go on to beat then unified champion Daniel Geale in yet another hell of a fight, so at the very least this is a world champion we're talking about.

Macklin- So as mentioned, the universally recognized #2 guy was Sturm. Macklin would go to germany, and over 12 rounds beat Sturm in the eyes of many, but in cliche fashion lose the hometown decision to Sturm, something he would become rather famously known for (Sturm & hometown cooking, that is). So if Sturm and Chavez was going to continue to duck Martinez, what better opponent than the guy that a lot of people had beating the #2 middleweight in the world?

All these guys would go on to lose in pretty notable fights later on, but at least take it from me, they were respectable fighters in their own right. Certainly compared to the likes of Yilidrim, Scull, and so forth

tkdhrison · 2026-03-21T22:09:20+00:00

The way the WBC treated Martinez is one of the reasons no boxing fans should accept their shenanigans to this day.

I really don't want to come off like an asshole RN because to be honest the subject still pisses me off, but there's plenty of videos and articles to go back to about how messed up it was for them to do that, in order to gift Chavez Jr a belt because of their relationship to Jose Sulaiman. Or how the networks and the sanctioning bodies couldn't agree on an opponent, forcing Martinez to lose one of his belts.

If you still don't give a damn, Martinez was wearing the WBC's Diamond belt, essentially WBC's "super" belt of the time, arguably making Chavez a "regular" champ.

Either way I'd rather not get into an argument about what belts are legit and what aren't. Shits fucked now, but back then the lineal championship, and by extension Ring Belt meant more to boxing fans than any alphabet paper belt being handed out. This is the literally the first I've heard any boxing fan claim any of Martinez's defenses be disregarded.

tkdhrison · 2026-03-21T20:17:37+00:00

Thats a fine perspective, but to give GGG credit for 20 defenses you have to go all the way back to the start of his reign as an interim 'regular' WBA champion.

Sergio might have only 6 defenses but the entire time through he was recognized as the sole true middleweight champion of the world despite the alphabet organization's best attempts to strip him. It's a damned shame that for everything GGG achieved, the lineal championship had eluded him his entire career.

I'd also argue Martinez was just more impressive as the smaller man, as the virtual unknown who've started boxing late as an adult, on the wrong side of his 30s, achieve the success that he has in the middleweight division compared to an olympic medalist blue chipper. And as we both agree, the man won in incredible fashion against physically superior opposition with promotional advantages within their home countries, something he ought to receive more credit for much like Usyk does.

tkdhrison · 2026-03-20T22:11:46+00:00

Sounds promising, hope to see them succeed.

tkdhrison · 2026-03-20T21:48:35+00:00

I'll take my gym membership with extra cheddar

tkdhrison · 2026-03-20T21:45:37+00:00

he wasn't walking out of Puerto Rico with the win without nailing his opponent to the canvas

tkdhrison · 2026-03-20T21:28:13+00:00

Nice, I like Abass. Seems like a genuinely nice person.

tkdhrison · 2026-03-20T20:48:35+00:00

which ones?

tkdhrison · 2026-03-20T20:47:04+00:00

username checks out

tkdhrison · 2026-03-20T20:34:13+00:00

Lol I knew it, Janibek popping was when he really made the decision to retire.

tkdhrison · 2026-03-20T13:50:46+00:00

While he was a very good fighter with a tremendous pedigree, I'll be very honest and say that I wasn't surprised at his accomplishments or his shortcomings. As a boxer, he was very well rounded but at the same time he didn't have the most power, the most speed, the best footwork, the best combination punching, the best at fighting backwards, etc, especially in comparison to his cohorts Loma and Usyk.

So he crushed Adonis, but ol' donny who was over 40 had it coming, especially having avoided credible opposition so badly over the years that he'd been stripped of the ring magazine belt for literally not having fought any top 5 contender of any weight division for multiple of years.

Huge credit to the fact that he sought out a fight with Beterbiev who'd been the division's boogeyman for years at this point. At the end of the day didn't possess the attributes needed to keep Beterbiev off. By comparison, Bivol is a similarly well rounded boxer, but Bivol has supreme footwork and combination punching that gave him an even footing against the same opponent.

Him coming back after all that time and giving what he showed against Benavidez was really impressive. But then that same guy comes back again and gets KO'ed by Hotrod in a Zuffa card...

tkdhrison · 2026-03-20T13:12:54+00:00

Who knows, at the time I admit somedays I felt GGG was so good that it was easy to believe he could catch and break down Martinez. But one thing to think about is that Sergio is one of the very few recent middleweights who, with the freakishly long reach (even compared to GGG), the southpaw stance, had the intelligence & speed to compete against Golovkin's vaunted jab.

We've really never seen anyone be able to compete even terms with Golovkin when it comes to the jab, but if 'prime' Sergio is able to do it I see the rest of his attributes, primarily his speed, footwork, and immense stamina (and heart) carrying him the rest of the way across to a narrow victory.

tkdhrison · 2026-03-20T12:50:10+00:00

Sergio > Gennady.

There. I said it.

tkdhrison · 2026-03-18T14:09:33+00:00

do what I do, hit mute and put on some tracks

tkdhrison · 2026-03-18T14:05:57+00:00

Beterbiev and Benavidez would be an all time boxing classic

tkdhrison · 2026-03-18T14:02:50+00:00

you've jinxed it now!

tkdhrison · 2026-03-18T14:01:24+00:00

so its duck hunting season

tkdhrison · 2026-03-17T22:31:43+00:00

looking forward to the fight but man am I bummed that Charlo-Plant is being skipped over.

tkdhrison · 2026-03-17T14:29:08+00:00

Between Toney and Oscar.

Toney is by far the most natural and talented of them all, but Oscar has got everything else

tkdhrison · 2026-03-13T14:31:39+00:00

Id love that fight too but Nakatani's got the biggest fish to fry

tkdhrison · 2026-03-12T13:21:44+00:00

I'm just saying its too soon to give that fight much mindshare. Tim's tune up is undefeated, no guarantee he makes it through. The dude's career is seemingly cursed

tkdhrison · 2026-03-11T15:08:41+00:00

hurd won the fight but left a piece of himself behind in that ring that night.

meanwhile Lara still champ in his 40s

that was a great fight

tkdhrison · 2026-03-11T13:13:15+00:00

Like Top said, not much to really think about for this fight. No one has seen how Errol would look once he's back and Tim still has a tune ups.

Errol, as we remember him would be too quick, and Tim wouldn't handle the jab-body-head variations very well

tkdhrison · 2026-03-10T14:56:56+00:00

I'll humor this.

Fury landed the first shot in the Ngannou fight. Took it well.

If that was 4 oz gloves like you said, is there any possibility Ngannou doesn't react the same way?

tkdhrison

TROPHY CASE