Super welterweight rivals, Xander Zayas and Jaron ‘Boots’ Ennis, have given separate statements to update fight fans on negotiations for their box office bout, and seem to suggest that a deal to fight is already done.
The fighters had been linked with one another only recently when negotiations between Ennis and Vergil Ortiz collapsed, down to the ongoing legal issues between the unbeaten Texan and his representative, Golden Boy Promotions. With Ortiz on the shelf, Ennis refused to wait around.
And Ortiz’s loss seems to be Zayas’s gain.
“Two-weight unified champ,” Ennis posted Saturday on X, indicating a title fight for at least two belts was on the horizon.
“And still,” Zayas simply replied, alongside emojis of the Puerto Rican flag and some smoke.
Zayas also posted footage seemingly showing him putting pen to paper on that deal.
One report suggested the Zayas vs Ennis fight was going to land at the Barclays Center in Brooklyn, New York, on Saturday, June 27.
If it were to take place in that area, a Top Rank stablemate of Zayas’s, Bruce Carrington, wants to compete on the card.
The featherweight fighter won the WBC championship with a ninth-round knockout win over Carlos Castro at Madison Square Garden but being from Brownsville, a neighborhood in east Brooklyn, Carrington is desperate to make the first defense of that crown in front of his hometown fans.
“If this is actually true, I must get on this card,” he wrote on X. “It’s Brooklyn. First title defense? It only makes sense.”
Zayas has already fought once this year — a decision win over Abass Baraou in a super welterweight world title unification which he won in Puerto Rico.
It was the first in a number of hot fights in the 154-pound division, including Sebastian Fundora’s recent bludgeoning of Keith Thurman, who bemoaned what he perceived to be an early stoppage, despite turning up to the post-fight press conference with grotesque swelling around his face.
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