Home Boxing News Boots Ennis needs to be tested before challenging Terence Crawford

Boots Ennis needs to be tested before challenging Terence Crawford

Jaron 'Boots' Ennis

There are many in the boxing world who are high on the sublime skills of welterweight contender Jaron ‘Boots’ Ennis 31-0 (28).

Flashy, athletic and explosive, the 26-year-old from Philadelphia has marked himself as a future ruler of the 147-pound weight class.

This past weekend Terence ‘Bud’ Crawford 40-0 (31) left no dispute that he is the best welterweight in the world as he unified the WBC, WBA, WBO and IBF titles with a ninth-round knockout win over Errol ‘The Truth’ Spence Jr 28-1 (22) in Las Vegas, Nevada.

The victory was so dominant, it made it hard to see anyone in the weight class who could present a real challenge to the 35-year-old switch-hitter from Omaha, Nebraska, with one possible exception – Ennis.

But not everyone if clamouring for that match-up. At least, just not right now.

“You kidding me right now?” retired former world champion turned ESPN pundit Tim Bradley said. “I respect Ennis, I love his pops, his pops is cool. His whole crew is tight. But who the hell has Boots fought? You can be riding that wave, you’ve been getting these knockouts of all these other different guys, but you’ve never been in the ring with an animal like Crawford.

“And when you get in there you get hit upside your head and you see you can’t do the stuff that you usually do against the guys that you fought at the lower level — bro, I would hate for him to get into that type of fight with Crawford, I would hate for him to get in this fight and look average…

“Boots is a spectacular fighter. I’m a fan of Boots, I think he’s next. But he needs to be tested. He needs to be tested with a guy like [Keith] Thurman. I wish Shawn Porter was still around. He needs to be tested with a guy like Shawn Porter, a Danny Garcia, top veterans out there that can punch, guys that can think with him.

“He needs to be tested with guys like that before I say ‘oh yeah, he ready for Crawford’… (he) makes a lot of mistakes, shows a lot of inexperience rushing in there and trying to go for the kill leaving himself wide open, leaving himself exposed. And there’s a lot of things that come along with that.

“And guess what? When you get into the ring with a Crawford that knows how to use his feet, that knows how to move and let you come to him and so on and so forth, that’s when he gonna set you up, he’s gonna lay a trap and he’s gonna catch you, he’s gonna knock you out.

“You heard it here, folks… ya’ll didn’t believe me the first time and you ain’t got to believe me now. Have your own opinion, but this is my assessment from a fighter that — hey, Hall of Famer, I’ve done it, I’ve been in the ring with Crawford, know what he’s capable of doing, bro. Trust me. And I knew he would get to this point sooner than later.”