Eddie Hearn plans on revisiting negotiations for a unification fight between IBF welterweight champion Jaron ‘Boots’ Ennis and WBO champ Brian Norman Jr. for next February.
Hearn came up empty with his recent talks for an Ennis vs. Norman Jr. fight for November 9th, but he plans on trying again later. Boots will defend against his IBF mandatory Karen Chukhadzhian (24-2 13 KOs) on November 9th at the Wells Fargo Center in Philadelphia.
Hearn hopes Ennis (32-0, 29 KOs) will knockout Chukhadzhian and look impressive to build for a uinification fight between Boots and the unbeaten Norman Jr. (26-0, 20 KOs) in February. He wants Ennis to stay at 147 until he unifies all the belts against Norman, WBC champion Mario Barrios, and WBA champ Eimantas Stanionis before he moves up to 154.
Hearn will need to offer the three champions good enough money for them to agree to fight Ennis because he’ll be waiting for ‘Boots’ time if he expects them to agree to low offers of less than $2 million.
Norman Jr., Barrios, and Stanionis have all shown no interest in agreeing to fight Ennis when Hearn has attempted to put those fights together. If Hearn can’t come up with the money to make those fights, he needs to advise Boots to move up to 154 because he’s wasting his time staying at 147 fighting the lesser names.
“In an ideal world, we’d be fighting a unification fight rather than Chukhadzhian,” said Eddie Hearn to Fight Hub TV about Jaron ‘Boots’ Ennis. “It’s not like he has to move to 154 because he can’t make the weight anymore.”
Hearn could have made the fight between Ennis and Norman Jr., but his idea of a big offer wasn’t what the WBO champion and his dad, Norman Sr., felt was large. Maybe Hearn is old-fashioned, but his $1.7 million offer was well short of the $2.2 million Norman Sr. wanted for his son.
Hearn wasn’t willing to increase it by the $500K needed to make that fight happen. There’s a difference between what the champions at 147 consider good money and what Hearn feels is optimum. Obviously, the British promoter Hearn will need to understand how the champions operate for him to make those fights fro Ennis.
“So, I feel like with the conversations with Norman, with the fact that I don’t think Stanionis is going to find a big fight,” said Hearn about wanting to make a unification fight between Ennis and WBO welterweight champions Brian Norman Jr. and WBA champion and Eimantas Stanionis.
“Barrios is fighting on Netflix card. I really feel we can make those unifications. I don’t want to leave the division before we make them if he doesn’t need to physically. So, my advice to Boots is to just get this fight [IBF mandatory Karen Chukhadzhian] out of the way.”
Hearn’s mentioning of Barrios fighting on Netflix and pretending to forget Norman Jr’s name doesn’t change the fact that they want more money than he’s willing to give them.
If he doesn’t want to pay them what they’re asking for, he needs to let Ennis know that he’s not able to make fights for him. Hearn can’t turn Boots into a star on the cheap by matching him against guys like Karen and David Avanesyan. He can hang on to Ennis his entire career, and he’ll never become a star if these are the only types of fights available.
“Try to stop him this time, jump all over him, bash him up, and get him out of there and see one of the others, Brian Norman. See if he wants to make life-changing money in a unification fight. And if he does, we’ll make that for February,” said Hearn.
