NEW YORK — Jaron Ennis’ head tilted back Saturday night and his feet wobbled after a right hand from Xander Zayas snuck through Ennis’ guard and rocked his face.
Ennis won his previous 35 fights but this — appearing hurt in a ring surrounded by a Brooklyn crowd roaring for him to be finished — was uncharted territory.
The fighter from Germantown has long been considered to be a future superstar of boxing. He had all the skills — defense, footwork, and power — to make it happen. And he never seemed to be in danger in the ring, often outclassing foes who could not match his talent.
Now, he was in the deep end. And everything — the career that started with a kid wanting to be like his older brothers who became a world champion under the tutelage of his dad — was on the line with more than 60 seconds left in the third round at the Barclays Center.
Ennis had to find a way to survive the bigger Zayas, who was pushing for a knockout. He did just that.
Ennis didn’t just escape the danger but rallied from that stomach-churning round to deliver an all-time Philly boxing performance. He regained control, knocked down Zayas in the fifth round, and then again in the seventh before the Puerto Rican’s corner stopped the fight as Ennis became the WBO and WBA junior middleweight champion.
“I think this is the one that takes it to the next level,” Ennis said. “We’re just getting started. I’m a pay-per-view superstar and the face of boxing.”
It was hard to doubt Ennis’ skills before Saturday night, which was the first time he headlined a pay-per-view event. But he had yet to enter a fight where the result seemed in question when the bell rang. This was the biggest test of his career, and it was his resilience — the ability to take a punch and keep moving — that was most impressive.
Ennis wants to be the “face of boxing.” Now it’s obvious that his face has the chin to make that happen.
“I came back to the corner and he was like ‘Yo man, stop playing,’” Ennis said, imitating his father and trainer Bozy. “I was chilling. I’m cool, calm, and collected. When there’s madness going on, I just get calm and be patient.”
“They might have thought I was hurt. But I was calm and relaxed. I was catching a lot of shots, too.”
Ennis was booed by the partisan crowd, who waved Puerto Rican flags for the island’s 23-year-old star. Ennis joked that they weren’t booing him but yelling “Boots.” He’s never been jeered before and didn’t mind being the foil, holding his hand to his ears when the boos drowned out the ring announcer when he was introduced.
“Give Boots credit, it changed quickly,” said Ennis’ father, Bozy, who trains his son. “But we don’t care about the boos. We just do our job.”
Ennis (36-0, 32 knockouts) came out throwing as he pushed the pace against Zayas (23-1, 13 KOs) and knocked him down with a right less than two minutes into the first round.
He controlled the ring in the second round before Zayas found his shot in the third round. The building rocked but Ennis dug deep. Thirty seconds after being dazed, he was already bobbing his head away from Zayas’ onslaught. It was as if he had been revived in the ring.
“Boots was dazed? He wasn’t dazed,” Bozy Ennis said. “He wasn’t dazed. How are you going to be dazed and come back like he came back? If you’re dazed, you’re going to be done. You know what I mean? That’s what dazed is.”
Undeterred, Ennis started the fourth-round by dragging Zayas into the center of the ring. The fighters exchanged phone-booth punches, giving the crowd the action they came to see.
Ennis was not hurt again after that third round. He used a perfectly placed hook to score another knockdown in the fifth and a left-right combination to drop Zayas to a knee in the seventh. The fighter looked to his corner, who decided Ennis had inflicted enough punishment and stopped the fight.
“I was being lazy on the inside,” Ennis said of the punch he took in the third round. “That’s on me. I have to sharpen that up. I’m going to sharpen that up. Don’t worry about that. It was a cool, little performance but I give myself a ‘C.’ I’m just getting started. I’m way better than that.”
Ennis, according to Compubox, landed 148 punches while Zayas landed just 90. Some questioned how Ennis would combat the bigger opponent as perhaps he would have to be crafty to win. The Philadelphian simply went right at him. Ennis was already a boxing star. But he left the ring as a superstar while Zayas was taken to the hospital as a precaution.
“I knew I would be too strong and I was the faster guy,” Ennis said. “He wouldn’t be able to see my shots.”
Ennis will likely return to the ring later this year against WBC champ Sebastian Fundora (24-1-1, 16 KOs) as the boxer wants to become the undisputed champ at 154 pounds. A fight with Vergil Ortiz Jr. (24-0, 22 KOs) was supposed to happen earlier this year before litigation between Ortiz and his promoter squashed the bout. That fight remains in play.
The next year could be career defining as Ennis will have the stage to prove himself as a pound-for-pound boxer and flag bearer of the sport. The journey to those fights started long ago in the gritty Philadelphia gyms his dad calls “dungeons.” He watched his older brothers train in a church basement with neighborhood kids in Germantown and dreamed of doing the same thing.
Ennis was there every afternoon, waiting for his dad to finish work so they could train in a gym without air conditioning. Boxing is all Ennis ever wanted to do since he was a boy in the “Brickyard” neighborhood.
And it was those dungeons that prepared Ennis for what happened on Saturday night when the walls appeared to be closing in. But everyone who knows where Ennis came from knew the Philadelphian was never in danger.
“He likes to fight,” Bozy Ennis said. “He can box. You can see he can box. You see what he’s doing with that jab. Pop. Pop. But then he likes to fight. I told everyone that Boots is going to stop him. They said Boots was the bully at 147 but he would be the bully at 154. I said ‘It doesn’t make a difference because he can knock heavyweights out.’”
