Boxing Challenge: Boots Kicks Stanionis!

     Jaron "Boots" Ennis has seen his career shaded a bit after two fights forced upon him against Karen Chukhadzian by the IBF both lasted the distance, and rumors that Ennis turned down a fight against Vergil Ortiz at junior middleweight but those days may be past after a destructive breakdown of Eimantas Stanonis to add the WBA title to his welterweight belt collection.

Stanonis's retirement in his corner following the sixth round returned Ennis to his previous status. While Ennis wishes to face one of the remaining champions in the division (WBC's Mario Barrios and WBO's Brian Norman), neither appears to be in the class of Ennis.

A fight against Barrios would be a foregone conclusion, in my opinion, and a match against Norman, while interesting, Norman lacks the polish and experience to deal with the Philadelphian.

Stanonis pressed forward on Ennis and landed a few strong punches, and Ennis will need to improve his defense when he eventually moves to junior middleweight, but Ennis was stronger, quicker, and his bodywork paid off in the sixth when Stanonis was sent to one knee late in the round.

Stanonis's team ended the fight after the round, and while some thought that decision may have been a little premature, Ennis had taken the battle out of Stanonis and would have finished the fight in the rounds to come, so the team was looking after the safety and future of their man.

Boots is back at the top, and hopefully, a fight with Brian Norman (I see no way PBC puts Mario Barrios with Ennis) can be made quickly to unify three of the four titles in the welterweight division.

In the co-feature, former WBA featherweight champion Raymond Ford continued his career as a junior lightweight with an easy, unanimous decision win over Thomas Mattice.

Ford badly hurt Mattice in the opening round but was unable to finish him, which led to the next nine less than thrilling rounds.

All three judges (and myself) scored Ford the winner by the score of 100-90

Boxing Challenge

TRS: 54 Pts (4)

Ramon Malpica: 46 Pts(3)

Vince Samano: 23 Pts (3)

Boxing Challenge: Stanionis holds off Butaev

   Since I'll be at work and unable to see the Showtime/PBC PPV broadcast from Arlington, Texas, I decided to get ahead of the game and write about the two fights that Showtime placed on their air from the undercard along with the main event from DAZN and Matchroom from Manchester, England.

I wrote in the preview that the welterweight pairing for a minor belt but importantly the mandatory position in the WBA for the Spence-Ugas winner between Radzhab Butaev and Eimantas Stanionis couldn't miss as an action fight and it turned out to be exactly that as Stanionis won a split decision to place him in line for tonight's Spence-Ugas victor.

Neither fighter scored a knockdown and neither did a lot of moving around the ring, leading to plenty of action and landed punches.

Stanionis landed more and the slightly harder punches against Butaev, who lost a point in the eleventh round for pushing down on Stanionis' head and still fought well against the stronger fighter.

Stanionis used his jab to get inside and work on Butaev and although it's not quite to this level, the Stanionis jab is a power jab and reminded me of how Gennady Golovkin uses his jab as a weapon not as one to probe or use from a distance.

I thought Stanonis was the winner at 116-111, which agreed with one of the winning cards for Stanionis with the other at 117-110, and was very surprised by the 114-113 card for Butaev which seemed way out of bounds.

It will be interesting to see if the WBA decides to strip the Spence-Ugas winner, should they not fight Stanonis next.

A unification fight against WBO champion Terence Crawford might get another allowance but Stanonis is in the picture and he'll be getting his shot sooner or later.

Junior welterweight prospect Brandun Lee was forced to go the ten round distance for the first time by veteran Zach Ochoa and despite getting hit more than he should in the final few rounds, Lee was able to get some good work in and was never threatened by Ochoa, who started to throw punches way too late to challenge Ochoa.

A nice win for Lee, who still has plenty of work to do before moving up a level in opposition but still looked strong enough going the ten rounds.

My score of 98-92 was in line with one judge with the other two scoring 99-91 for Lee.

No judges were needed in Manchester England with welterweight Conor Benn destroying veteran Chris Van Heerden in two rounds.

Benn and Van Heerden each fought well in the first round with both landing good shots but in the second round, Benn crunched Van Heerden with one right-hand bomb, and a few seconds and a strong flurry later, Van Heerden was crumpled in a corner and the referee saw no need for a count.

Benn's ready for bigger challenges but Matchroom really doesn't have a good fit for him right now, unless they want to massively overpay Terence Crawford to defend his WBO title in England, which wouldn't be a good idea anyway as Benn is nowhere near ready for a fighter of "Bud's" talent.

Benn's next opponent that would make sense would be light-hitting and undefeated Brit Michael McKinson, who has only two knockouts and bored watchers to sleep in McKinson's American debut.

Still, Matchroom has both fighters and McKinson is rated higher in the WBO (3rd to 5th) so a win would be worth something but after the fight, the name Amir Khan emerged as a possibility.

That's an awful idea considering what Khan looked like in his knockout loss to Kell Brook and it could get Khan badly hurt, so here is hoping that idea goes by the wayside.

Boxing Challenge

TRS: 56 Pts (4)

Vince Samano: 50 Pts (4)

Ramon Malpica: 46 Pts (4) 

Boxing Challenge: Hamburglar arrives in Minneapolis

    The Saturday night card with three welterweight fights showed one thing- when it comes to boxing in loosely regulated states, nothing should surprise you.

In the main event, undefeated prospect Eimantas Stanionis was in the middle of a surprisingly salty battle with former WBA champion Luis Collazo in the fourth round when their heads collided.

When Collazo fell to the floor with a mild cut and was concussed, it didn't take much to see that this one was over.   

Had the fight lasted less than a minute longer, the ending would have moved to the scorecards but instead, the fight was ruled a no contest. 

That's too bad because even though that Stanionis was controlling the fight, Collazo was landing his share and going all out to make what he said was to be his final fight of a long career a good one.

Collazo stated that this was his final fight afterward, but this is boxing and that can change on a dime.

As for Stanionis, he appears to be ready to face top ten competition and considering the talent that PBC owns at welterweight that could come very soon.

The middle fight was supposed to be the coming-out party for two-time Olympian Gabriel Maestre for another WBA minor title.

Maestre's original opponent, another former Olympian Cody Crowley, dropped out due to Covid-19 and was replaced by Mykal Fox, who had lost in his most recent fight to Lucas Santamaria who fought in the opening fight of the televised portion of the card.

The 6'4 Fox was expected to be broken down by Maestre, a supposed big puncher, but it was Fox the scored the only knockdown of the fight when he connected with a straight left in the second round.

I had Fox a 118-109 winner (10-2 with a knockdown) and it seemed like a formality for the decision for Fox.

Then the decision was announced 114-113  (which had me thinking someone saw this even other than the knockdown),115-112 (uh oh), and then 117-110- All for Maestre, and as I watched and uttered a loud profanity, Cherie (who could care less about boxing) asked: "How do you watch this again and again?"

I don't know dear but this is the worst decision of the year and while the current heat is on judge Gloria Martinez's 117-110 score and on some racist tweets that she has made in the past, where the heat should be is on Martinez's husband Ricardo Rizzo-obvious conflict of interest and Marcos Villegas, Fox's unofficial reporter, reports that a WBA official stood in Maestre's corner.

The WBA is the oldest sanctioning body in boxing and it's also the worst of the four organizations.

They bring nothing of value other than the best title belt and while the other three all have their issues, none of them bring the sewage-like quality of the WBA.

I'm planning a post on the bad points on each of the sanctioning bodies and what can they do to fix them should they have the desire to along with why the WBA is truly the worst of them all.

In a dull opening match, the aforementioned Santamaria won a unanimous decision over former junior welterweight and welterweight champion Devon Alexander.

It was an awkward mix in styles but evenly matched over the first half of the fight before Santamaria controlled the final few rounds to win a boring affair 96-94 on my card.

Alexander's not a totally shot fighter, but he was never a puncher and he's lost that slickness that once made him a champion.

Now he just shuffles forward, throws pitty-pat shots that don't deter the opponent, and might be best suited to consider retirement.

In the boxing challenge, I scored three points to Ramon Malpica's one to extend my lead to 108-94 in the season standings.

Boxing Challenge: Ennis erases Lipinets, Smith shades Vlasov

 The Saturday boxing evening shifted to ESPN and Showtime and while the results ended in wins for the expected "Chalk", but in only one case did the winner walk out of the ring with the kudos that were expected as well.

Let's start with the three-fight Showtime card from Uncasville, Connecticut, and their main event with the highly touted Jaron "Boots" Ennis taking his next step forward against former IBF junior welterweight champion Sergey Lipinets.

Much as in last week's fight between Jamel Herring and Carl Frampton, the size difference between these two was glaring and Ennis dominated the once-beaten Lipinets in every round, including a 10-8 round after a fourth-round knockdown.

With Ennis leading 50-44 going to the sixth, there wouldn't be a seventh as Ennis finished with a right hook followed by a left hand to send Lipinets crashing to the floor with the fight ended without a count.

Al Bernstein made a great point on the telecast when he stated that Ennis is unusual for a fighter that can switch easily from lefty to righthander in that he can do so without losing power in either hand.

Ennis is bad news already for anyone in the division, not named Spence or Crawford, and his talents might be just as even against them although he could need a little seasoning against a fighter better than Lipinets against a Shawn Porter or Keith Thurman before a fight with the champions.

Ennis may not receive that title shot for a while as he is the definition of high risk-low reward for Spence, Crawford, or newly crowned WBA champion Yordenis Ugas and may have to be the mandatory challenger, but unless one of the inept "Four Donkeys" of boxing decides to radically elevate Ennis after his win over Lipinets, Ennis may have to fight an eliminator or not.

Ennis is currently ranked 7th by the WBO, 9th in the IBF (although this could be his biggest leap as Lipinets was rated 3rd there), 12th by the WBC, and unranked by the putrid WBA, who finds a way to rate fighters such as Gabriel Maestre, Alberto Palmetta, Abel Ramos, Cody Crowley, and Conor Benn without Ennis.

Truly awful...

The undercard pitting two of those WBA welterweights rated ahead of Ennis in an eliminator between Eimantas Stanionis and Thomas Dulorme.

Dulorme is a solid, but not quite top ten 147 pounder and he was thought to give the undefeated Stanionis his toughest fight as a pro and he did so in a close unanimous decision victory,

Stanionis won the final four rounds on my card to win 115-113 over Dulorme, who likely earned himself another paycheck against an undefeated prospect/contender with a strong effort.

I don't think Stanionis has a prayer against Jaron Ennis, but he looks like an eventual top ten welterweight.

The opener was expected to be a dull battle and instead was a terrific fight as Jerwin Ancajas retained his IBF junior bantamweight championship with a unanimous decision over Jonathan Rodriguez.

Lots of action in this one and Ancajas scoring an eighth-round knockdown that won him the fight on my card 114-113, although it seemed that many were unhappy with the official scores that saw Ancajas win by wider margins of three, five, and seven points.

If you really stretch things, you may see Ancajas by three points but the five and seven are ridiculous cards.

Ancajas kept his title for the ninth time and I'd like to see him in a unification fight against WBO champion Kazuto Ioka, which would create a natural opponent for the survivor of the triangle between Juan Francisco Estrada, Roman Gonzalez, and Srisaket Sor Rungvisai, and a great attempt for the unknown Rodriguez, who I would like to see again in a big fight.

Over on ESPN, heavily favored Joe Smith rallied to win the final two rounds and slide by Maxim Vlasov by a majority decision in Tulsa Oklahoma to grab the vacant WBO light heavyweight title.

The scorecards were even at 114-114 and the two cards for Smith were 115-113 and 115-112.

The latter score didn't cost Vlasov the fight, but Smith hit Vlasov in the back of the head in the eleventh round and the fight was shortly delayed so Vlasov could recover, but the 115-112 judge still scored the round 10-8 stating that he thought it was a knockdown.

That's great and all, but your ruling isn't suppose to overrule the referee's decision- Be grateful that point didn't cost Vlasov all that much.

Vlasov used an awkward volume punching style that puzzled Smith for most of the fight and I thought Vlasov did enough to pull the upset 115-113 on my scorecard.

But per usual, the underdog on the road rarely gets the close call and Vlasov certainly didn't help his cause by giving Smith the final two rounds which were enough to give Smith the win.

Smith will likely unify his newly won title with those of WBC and IBF champion Artur Beterbiev in what should be a great fight between two straight ahead bombers with the best punching power in the division.

In the boxing challenge, I outscored Ramon Malpica seven-five on the weekend (including the previously written Conor Benn win) with the win by Jerwin Ancajas allowing for the two-point difference.

I lead the boxing challenge 45-41.