Jaron “Boots” Ennis may have delivered the biggest victory of his career on Saturday night, but he wasn’t ready to hand himself top marks afterward.
Ennis stopped previously unbeaten Xander Zayas in the seventh round at Barclays Center in Brooklyn to capture the WBA and WBO junior middleweight titles, dropping the Puerto Rican star three times before Zayas’ corner threw in the towel. Despite the dominant performance, the Philadelphia native graded himself only a C+ during the post-fight press conference.
“I’ll probably give myself probably like a C… C-plus,” Ennis said at the post-fight press conference. “I know I’m way better than that. I was getting into the corner a little bit. They was telling me to use speed, and I was throwing one shot. It’s the shots you don’t see. I should have been using a little bit more speed.”
Ennis admitted he drifted away from the game plan at times by looking for power instead of relying on his hand speed, something he plans to correct before his next outing.
The 29-year-old knocked Zayas down in the opening round with a sharp counter, scored another knockdown in the fifth, and finished the job in the seventh after a third trip to the canvas prompted Zayas’ corner to stop the fight. Although Zayas briefly buzzed him in the third round, Ennis insisted afterward that he was never in serious trouble.
“I was chilling,” Ennis said. “I just got a little lazy on the inside. Got caught with a good shot, but I was cool.”
The victory made Ennis a unified champion in a second weight class after previously holding unified titles at welterweight. Even after adding two more world championships to his résumé, he made it clear that his work at 154 pounds is only beginning.
Ennis said his goal remains becoming the undisputed champion, though he also welcomed a showdown with Virgil Ortiz Jr. if the title fights cannot be made.
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Last Updated on 2026/06/28 at 2:52 AM
