‘Boots’ Ennis unifies belts as Stanionis’ corner halts fight
Jaron “Boots” Ennis defeated Eimantas Stanionis by sixth-round TKO to unify the IBF and WBA welterweight titles Saturday night in Atlantic City, New Jersey. It was a showdown between ESPN’s top two welterweights.
Ennis, the IBF champion entering the bout, used a body attack to break down Stanionis. He used his jab to open Stanionis up and made him pay with hooks to the body.
Stanionis started the fight attacking and landed a good counter left in the first round, while Ennis used his lead jab for most of the round and mixed some good body punches. Stanionis landed a couple of good overhand rights in the third, but Ennis rebounded in the fourth, landing more body punches and using a very accurate jab that had Stanionis bleeding from the nose.
In the sixth, Ennis kept landing the jab and using angles to connect to the body. He hit Stanionis with a flurry of body punches that forced Stanionis to take a knee. The round ended, but Stanionis’ trainer Marvin Somodio stopped the fight before the start of the seventh.
“I feel like I was just getting in my groove, started getting loose,” Ennis said after the fight. “I had fun, and my dad told me, ‘Just keep pressing, you’re going to stop him.’ And what’s crazy was I had a dream I was going to stop him just like this in the seventh round. It came true.”
Ennis added: “The biggest part was me having my fun, being myself and having a live body in front of me. I put on the show, I had my fun, I used speed, power, defense. I showed you a little bit of inside game.”
Ennis wasn’t perfect. He landed only 19% of his total punches to Stanionis 31%, but he outlanded Stanionis 23-9 in power punches to the body.
Ennis (34-0, 30 KOs) was making the third defense of his belt. He defeated Karen Chukhadzhian by unanimous decision in November, when he dropped Chukhadzhian in Round 5 and won by scores of 119-107, 117-109 and 116-110. Ennis had beaten Chukhadzhian previously in January 2023, winning every round in all three judges’ scorecards.
Ennis has won six of his past eight fights by stoppage, including KO wins over Sergey Lipinets, Thomas Dulorme, Roiman Villa and David Avanesyan.
Stanionis (15-1, 9 KOs) was the WBA “regular” welterweight champion and then elevated to full champion when Terence Crawford moved up to junior middleweight to face Israil Madrimov in August 2024. Stanionis didn’t fight in 2023 after a fight against Vergil Ortiz Jr. was postponed multiple times.
This was Stanionis’ first professional defeat.
“I’m gonna enjoy my victory, enjoy these belts,” Ennis said about his future. “I’ll talk to the team and we’re going to see what’s next.”
In the co-main event, Raymond Ford (17-1-1, 8 KOs) dominated Thomas Mattice (22-5-1, 17 KOs) in a unanimous decision victory. All three judges scored the fight 100-90. This was Ford’s second victory since he moved up in weight to junior lightweight, following his split-decision defeat to Nick Ball in June 2024.
“It was a solid opponent in there,” Ford said after the fight. “He was real smart. I did want the stoppage, the knockout. It was times where I hurt him at times, and I let him grab me. He was a smart veteran.”
Ford said he would like his next fight to be against Eduardo Nunez, who takes on Masanori Rikiishi for the vacant IBF junior lightweight title on May 28 in Japan.
“I’ve been telling [promoter] Eddie [Hearn] this. Been telling my team this. [Nunez] knows I want this fight,” Ford said. “It is up to him if he wants to fight me. So that’s the real question. So hopefully he goes over there and do his thing, bring that belt back so we can get it on.”
Source: espn.com