IBF welterweight champion Jaron ‘Boots’ Ennis (34-0, 29 KOs) had a tougher time than expected, beating his mandatory challenger Karen Chukhadzhian (24-3, 13 KOs) by 12-round unanimous decision on Saturday night in their rematch at the Wells Fargo Center in Philadelphia.
Boots ate a lot of heavy shots from the faster and more skilled Chukhadzhian, but his chin carried him through. Ennis dropped Chukhadzhian in the fifth round with a barrage of punches. In the tenth round, Chukhadzhian was penalized for holding.
The scores were 119-107, 117-109 and 116-110.
Ennis looked frustrated throughout the fight, talking to people in the audience and appearing upset.
“I think it’s time for me to go to 154,” said Ennis after the fight. “I hurt him a lot of times. I was rushing. I know if I fight a way better guy, I’ll be better. I need the top guys. If we can get one of these guys, let’s make it happen. If not, 154, here I come. Maybe, I can collect the belts at 154. I want to fight the top guys.”
Tonight’s Undercard Results
WBC super flyweight champion Jesse ‘Bam’ Rodriguez (21-0, 14 KOs) obliterated Pedro Guevara (42-5-1, 22 KOs), stopping him in the third round. Bam knocked Guevara twice in round three with left hands.
In the first knockdown, Rodriguez nailed Guevara with a left hook to the head. Moments later, Bam dropped the 35-year-old Guevara by a left uppercut. The referee, Ricky Gonzalez, waved it off at that point. The official time of the stoppage was at 2:40 of round three.
– Making his debut at super Featherweight, former WBA 126-lb champion Raymond Ford (16-1-1, 8 KO) dominated Orlando Gonzalez (23-3, 13 KO), winning a ten-round unanimous decision.
Ford dropped Gonzalez twice in the contest, putting him down in rounds two and eight. Gonzalez went into survival mode in the final two rounds, clinching and moving in rounds nine and ten to keep from being knocked out. It worked, but it was not thrilling to watch.
The scores
– 99-89
– 100-89
– 100-88
In rounds three through seven, Gonzalez had looked good at times, landing speedy combinations and moving away from Ford’s powerful right hook. In the sixth, Ford hurt Gonzalez with a big right hook that was blocked by his glove. Gonzalez had his left hand up against his face to protect himself, but Ford’s punch was so powerful that it still hurt him.
It was similar to how unified light heavyweight champion Artur Beterbiev marked up former WBA champion Dmitry Bivol with his hard punches that were blocked, but the power behind them transferred through Bivol’s gloves into his face. We saw the same thing with Ford’s shots doing damage to Gonzalez.
The new power that Ford is showing at 130 suggests that he’s going to be a different fighter in this weight class compared to when he was fighting at featherweight and was more of a finesse-level fighter.
With how Ford looked tonight, he would be the favorite against WBC super featherweight champion O’Shaquie Foster and WBA champ Lamont Roach. The one that might give Ford problems is WBO champ Emanuel Navarrete. If Eduardo ‘Sugar’ Nunez gets his hands on the IBF title, that would be a great fight for Ford.
– Light heavyweight Manuel Gallegos (21-2-1, 18 KOs) dropped previously unbeaten favorite Khalil Coe (9-1-1, 7 KOs) four times en route to a ninth-round upset. Coe was knocked down by heavy shots from the volume puncher Gallegos in rounds 5, 7, 8, and 9. The referee waved it off after Goe was knocked down by a left to the head from Gallegos in the opening seven seconds of the ninth.
Coe looked great early on, connecting with powerful uppercuts to the head of Gallegos in rounds one through four. Gallegos took over the fight in the fifth, dropping Coe with a left-hand body shot. That knockdown took a lot of the steam out of Coe, who had slowly been worn down with the body punching from Gallegos, and looked he had nothing left after the fifth round.
– Middleweight contender Austin ‘Ammo’ Williams (17-1, 12 KOs) kept his career alive with a fifth-round technical knockout victory over Gian Garrido (11-2, 8 KOs). Williams struggled in rounds two through four from the pressure from Garrido.
In the fifth, Ammo turned things around, going on the attack, hurting Garrido with a left hand, and then finishing him off with a followup flurry of power shots. The time of the stoppage was at 1:04 of round five.
Ammo was coming off an 11th-round knockout against Hamzah Sheeraz on June 1st, and he didn’t have the same confidence that he had before that loss. Garrido was backing up Williams, stunning him in round two and nailing him with hard shots that had him looking like he was on his way to another defeat. However, after a pep talk before the fifth round, Ammo came out aggressively and knocked out Garrido.
After the fight, Ammo said, “I’m back!” He said that he would be challenging for a world title in 2025 against one of the champions at middleweight. If Ammo has to fight someone good to earn a world title shot, he might not end well for him. He looked too timid and chinny tonight for him to win a world title eliminator.
