With Jaron Ennis, Eddie Hearn finally has something he’s never had
There is a greater significance to Jaron Ennis’ latest title-unifying win that goes beyond his own individual success. It’s good for American boxing — and Eddie Hearn's Matchroom Sport too.
Aside from a boom year in 2023, when boxing produced an event which surpassed the 1 million pay-per-view barrier with Gervonta "Tank" Davis vs. Ryan Garcia, as well as the blockbuster undisputed welterweight championship fight involving Terence Crawford and Errol Spence Jr., there has been a lack of tentpole fights — and continuity — in the United States.
Relative newcomers like the sport’s latest financier Turki Alalshikh have since put much of boxing in a stranglehold, diverting bouts that would have taken place in the United Kingdom or Europe, and giving them marquee treatment in Saudi Arabia, instead, as part of its ubiquitous Riyadh Season.
Alalshikh has orchestrated fights that are critical to the sport, like the expected Artur Beterbiev vs. Dmitry Bivol trilogy, and 2024's Oleksandr Usyk vs. Tyson Fury heavyweight series, amongst crossover events like Francis Ngannou’s forays in a new fighting discipline.
But America remains a final frontier to conquer. And currently, it’s up for grabs.
Premier Boxing Champions with Prime Video remains relatively muted with its output when compared to its 2023 rollout on Showtime Sports, and Top Rank’s divorce from ESPN provides question marks as to which broadcast platform it’ll eventually partner with. Though Oscar De La Hoya's Golden Boy has a solid offering, it appears to still play second-fiddle to Hearn's Matchroom on their shared broadcaster DAZN.
Matchroom has as great a chance as any to become the premiere organization in the US, as the competition at the top is not as strong as it has been in previous years.
Though Matchroom chairman Hearn attempted to storm into America all guns blazing, armed with an alleged $ 1 billion war chest from DAZN to sign fighters in 2018, he has yet to recruit — or develop — a fighter for the U.S. who can drive the bulk of the company’s revenues for a sustained period of time, even though it has dominated the U.K. and Irish markets through Anthony Joshua and Katie Taylor.
In the years since the $ 1 billion deal with DAZN, Hearn and Matchroom U.S. have furthered their knowledge of the country, of sports scheduling in the States, and of key host cities. It has combined that with a talent identification and recruitment drive that peaked in the past year thanks to the respective arrivals of Ennis and WBC lightweight champion Shakur Stevenson.
Ennis and Stevenson significantly bolstered Matchroom’s roster at a time when the path to conquering the American market has, perhaps, rarely been easier.
While Stevenson attracts criticism for a boxing style perceived to be too negative for many, "Boots" is the near-opposite as an entertainer, who has a clear and confident swag from his ring walk to his stance, which is reminiscent of unorthodox generational boxers like Roy Jones Jr. and "Prince" Naseem Hamed.
There is a rhythm to his work which is difficult to teach. Ennis showed on Saturday, against Eimantas Stanionis in a world welterweight championship unification fight for the IBF/WBA/Ring Magazine titles, that he not only has that, but good footwork, fast jabs and an unrelenting dig to the body, too.
Stanionis scored superb work in the fifth round but "Boots" returned fire by bloodying and rearranging his opponent's face, scoring a thudding right hook to jaw, before a series of left uppercuts led to a retirement stoppage at the end of the sixth.
Ennis secured one of the things he’s spoken of that are critical, he said, to his legacy — annexing another of the world titles at welterweight. He’s a unified world champion now, and he may well only be getting started.
The 27-year-old looked at least a weight class bigger than Stanionis on the night, so he may not be long for the division, but Hearn may be able to maneuver him into fights that will bolster his name value even further, beyond boxing’s hardcore, before a natural bout against Vergil Ortiz Jr. at 154 pounds.
Yes, Mario Barrios and Brian Norman Jr. have the sport's remaining welterweight titles. But fights against the likes of Teofimo Lopez or Ryan Garcia — which DAZN could help facilitate — would deliver far more eyeballs to an Ennis event, boosting his drawing power as he heads into big-ticket events against a wealth of elite names at super welterweight.
There is little doubt that Ennis has the physical and technical abilities to be considered by consensus as one of the best boxers of the current era.
Matchroom and Hearn’s next task, though, is to turn Ennis into a Joshua or Taylor for the U.S. market. And "Boots" even has an advantage that his peers for that role may not have — timing.
The two faces for the fight game in the U.S. right now are Gervonta "Tank" Davis, who has been talking about retirement, and Saul "Canelo" Alvarez, who is at the tail-end of his career. America needs a third face who can dominate the pound-for-pound charts for the rest of the decade, rather than the next year or two.
With Ennis wanting to secure undisputed status at welterweight all the way up to super middleweight, it sounds like he’s around for the long game — perhaps another 10 fights, if not a hell of a lot more. And so there is ample time for Hearn to continue building Ennis into a ticket-seller in his hometown of Philadelphia, in the surrounding regions like Atlantic City and New York City, and even as a Las Vegas attraction.
He could be a subscription-driver for the North American market that DAZN has not had since its swing of "Canelo" events.
Ennis’ win over Stanionis on Saturday was not only the best of his own career, but an important victory for American boxing, as well as Hearn, as Matchroom can now make considerable progress in the sport’s key market, at a time when this country is desperate for a fighter like "Boots" can be.
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