Jaron “Boots” Ennis did exactly what he needed to do, only faster. In his first fight since moving up to 154 pounds, Ennis knocked out somebody named Uisma Lima just two minutes after the opening bell on Saturday night in front of a hometown Philadelphia crowd to take the WBO interim super welterweight title.
So I think I’m speaking for Ennis’s fans and, hell, anybody who gives a damn about boxing when I say, with all due respect: Nicely done, Boots … NOW GO FIGHT SOMEBODY WE’VE HEARD OF, FOR CRISSAKES!
Ennis, whose career record is now 35-0 with 31 KOs, has been billed as the inevitable face of boxing for a couple years now. Ennis got his reputation by looking incredible against a bunch of nobodies while fighting at 147 pounds. Not a talentless bunch, mind you, but to mainstream followers of the sweet science, an exclusively anonymous one. But even so, by last year Ennis was on the verge of being a pay-per-view headliner, or being brought to Riaydh by deep-pocketed Saudi boxing patron Turki Alalshikh, or both. Then the hype train got derailed. No official attendance figures were announced for the Lima fight, but the upper deck of the arena was completely unsold, and the crowd appeared to be substantially smaller than the reported "about 10,000" folks who saw Ennis win by decision over Karen Chukhadzhian in the same building in November 2024. And that fight in turn drew thousands fewer than the 14,119 spectators that witnessed Boots’s July 2024 decision against Davi Avanesyan, yet again in Philly. The moral is, you can stay on a steady diet of tomato cans so long as you put on a good show. If you don't, even your hometown fans will stop showing up.
Before the opening bell, promoter Eddie Hearn said Ennis needed a boffo performance in his 154-pound debut if he was ever going to get fight fans back to calling him “the future of the sport.” And, boy, did he give one. Ennis, who trained with Saul “Canelo” Alvarez while preparing for this fight, made Lima wait in the ring for five minutes before making his walk from the dressing room. As it turned out, the fight was nowhere near as long.
The opening bell rang and both fighters spent a minute feeling each other out and keeping their fists to themselves. Then Ennis switched from his normal orthodox stance to southpaw and got busy. Two probing right jabs from Ennis hit nothing, then he threw a ugly sweeping left hand that missed Lima and appeared to leave Ennis off balance and momentarily easy prey. But by the time Lima tried a hard left of his own, Ennis was already throwing a brutal and beautiful right uppercut that caught the Angolan shipper on the cheek and got him wobbly. Ennis quickly stalked the wounded opponent and landed a right-left-right combo to the sides of his head. Gravity clearly had Lima’s address by this point, as he fell to the canvas with almost comical quickness.
Lima, who came into the fight with a 14-1 record, unwisely hopped up immediately. He’d soon find himself 14-2. Ennis was back on the attack the second referee Shawn Clark waved him back in from the neutral corner. The ferocity was chilling. Ennis began throwing lefts and rights from his heels, and Clark seemed on the verge of calling the fight when Lima collapsed in a pile again. After another short count, Lima was up and absorbing yet another round of haymakers from Ennis, and would have gone down a third time had the corner ropes and turnbuckle not been there to hold him up. Clark stopped the beating with 1:01 left in the first round, just as Lima’s cornermen threw in a towel to save their fighter. The building shook with ecstasy. This was the performance and finish Philly fans had been waiting more than a year to see from Ennis.
The Compubox stats show how quick this workday was for both fighters. Neither Ennis nor Lima stuck around long enough to land a single jab. Lima touched Ennis with just two punches on the night, and took 15 power shots before the stoppage.
Now the boxing world waits to see Boots’s next move. Some fight game insiders have absolved Ennis of some of the blame for his lackluster ring résumé. Fans have been begging Boots for years to fight Vergil Ortiz, the popular, talented and undefeated (23-0, with 21 KOs) WBC interim superwelterweight champ. Promoter Hearn told DAZN before the Lima fight that Ennis had actually agreed over and over again to get in the ring with Ortiz, but that the Texas fighter was the one doing all the ducking. Hearn, an Englishman who has enough clout to make big fights happen, said that if Ortiz gets past unknown Erickson Lubin next month in Fort Worth, the Ennis bout will finally take place.
Then Ennis, after dispatching Lima, called out Ortiz.
"I did what I had to do," Ennis told ESPN. "I sent a big message. You know what time it is, and you know who I want."
If Ortiz loses to Lubin, or wins but gets back to ducking the Philly fighter, look for the clamoring to turn toward an Ennis matchup against Sebastian Fundora, a rail-thin 6-foot-5 inch ring man.
Fundora, who holds yet another super welterweight belt, became a fan favorite with his March 2024 win over Tim Tszyu in one of the bloodiest bouts of all time. Styles make fights, and Fundora’s ridiculously lengthy jab against Ennis’s hellacious haymakers could make for a must-see matchup. Remember those?
