Unified super welterweight world boxing champion, Xander Zayas, wants to make Jaron ‘Boots’ Ennis pay by taking his heart when they collide in one of the summer’s best showdowns.
It’s all because he feels Ennis is overlooking him ahead of their Saturday, June 27 bout at Barclays Center in Brooklyn, New York.
Ennis is revered as one of the greater punchers in the lighter weight classes, as, with 31 knockouts from 35 wins, he has an 88% finish rate, having toplled Eimantas Stanionis, David Avenesyan, and Sergey Lipinets, among others.
He is yet to face anyone on Zayas’s level but, regardless, doubts the Puerto Rican prizefighter has ever shared the ring with someone like him, he said, when speaking recently with Uncrowned.
“I’m not sure if [Zayas] poses any real problems for me.”
He said: “He’s a good fighter. I respect him. He’s a solid fighter [but] he does nothing that concerns me.”
At 23, Zayas is five years younger than Ennis but has more meaningful wins with vicrories over Patrick Teixeira, Jorge Garcia Perez, whom he beat to claim the vacant WBO title, and then Abass Baraou who he breezed past earlier this year to annex the WBA title, too.
“I still feel my best is yet to come,” he said. “I had a lot of energy during fight week in my last fight. I like Xander, I respect him. But I’m someone he’s never faced before.”
Zayas feels it may be the worst thing Boots could do, if he keeps taking him lightly.
“He can think anyway he wants,” Zayas told the same publication. “I know I can give ‘Boots’ a problem — he’s never been in the ring with someone like me.”
“If I get the chance, I’ll rip out his heart.”
Zayas continued: “He’s going to feel uncomfortable, and I’m going to put him there.
“He won [in past fights] because he’s bullied guys, beating guys he was bigger than and more athletic than. Let him face me. I’m someone who is as big as he is, just as athletic as he is, and probably stronger than he is, because I’m a natural 154-pounder. I’m as athletic and will be as composed and as smart in the ring as he is.
“It will be a competitive fight, but I can do a lot more things in the ring than he can,” Zayas finished.
