Jaron ‘Boots’ Ennis was promoted to IBF champion after Terence Crawford was stripped, but his father/trainer says that’s not the way they wanted to become champion.
Fight Hub TV just caught up with trainer Bozy Enniss to talk about a number of topics, including the fairly recent news of Terence Crawford being stripped of his IBF title, with his son being promoted to full titleholder. Ennis says he and his son would’ve preferred to have earned the title in the ring, but have long waited for their shot at the belt and weren’t going to just walk away. Check out some of what he had to say below.
Bozy Ennis on how he and Jaron feel about being promoted from interim to full IBF champion
“Well, one thing, it don’t make us feel that good because we wanted to fight for the title. We didn’t want to, you know, have to be handed the title. But we didn’t want the title to get away from us either because we’ve been trying to fight for that title for two years when Spence had it.
“(Spence) didn’t take the fight with Boots, so him and Crawford fought and we figured that Crawford would fight us because he made a statement to Spence that he always defend his mandatories. And so Boots was his mandatory but we didn’t get a chance to fight him. It would’ve been much better if we had fought for it.”
On if he feels Crawford was stripped to quickly after winning the IBF title
“Not really because, remember, we was after the belt for a long time, two years. They should have more sympathy for us than him, ‘cause we been chasing the belt for two years. But I understand where Crawford’s coming from. I guess he don’t want to take the fight with Boots because it’s high risk, low reward. And then I think he trying to get some bigger fights and then I think he just going off and wind up being a trainer or just enjoy his life.”
On who they’re looking to fight next now that they’ve got a world title
“Well, you know Boots got the belt now but you don’t hear nobody calling him out…I think Barrios said he’ll take the fight but we’re waiting on Stanionis, we’re waiting on Thurman, all the top guys in the top 5, whatever.”
