“Stoppage Without Fighting”: Jaron Ennis’ Superior Boxing Technique Leads To Stanionis’ Corner Retirement

Paulie Malignaggi was impressed with how skillful IBF welterweight champion Jaron ‘Boots’ Ennis (34-0, 30 KOs) looked in victory on Saturday night, knocking out WBA champ Eimantas Stanionis (15-1, 9 KOs) in the sixth round at the Boardwalk Hall in Atlantic City, New Jersey.

“No Fighting” KO

Malignaggi points out that Ennis, 27, got a knockout “without fighting.” He was able to get the stoppage by boxing and pot-shotting Stanionis without getting hit a lot in the fight. He didn’t expect Boots to win that way.

Ennis slowly beat up the slower, smaller Stanionis through the first five rounds and then knocked him down late in the sixth. After the round ended, Stanionis’s corner decided he’d taken enough punishment and didn’t send him out for the seventh.

Size Matters Too

Ennis looked at least 15 lbs heavier than Stanionis inside the ring tonight. You could tell that he’d rehydrated a whole bunch, and that extra size that Boots had on his frame would have been enough for him to win with just that alone. But he also had the technical skills advantage with his modern fighting style compared to the primitive Rocky Balboa-esque approach that Stanionis was using.

“You forget that Jaron can box so well. I think he was reminding us tonight how he can box so well,” said Paulie Malignaggi to Fighthype, reacting to Jaron ‘Boots’ Ennis’ win over Eimantas Stanionis. “He got a stoppage without fighting. He got a stoppage by being a real good boxer and outclassing Stanionis. I didn’t expect it to come in that way.”

Stanionis made it easy by using an old Rocky style of fighting against a modern boxer tonight, and it was never going to work. Ennis knew he could outbox Stanionis, which is obviously why he chose to stay at 147 to complete his goal of becoming the undisputed champion. He knew Stanionis was made to order for him.

An Easy Fight?

“He’s an excellent fighter,” said Malignaggi about Boots Ennis. “I think this performance tonight over Stanionis, who was a difficult guy. Nobody expected it to be this easy. I don’t think Stanionis expected Ennis to fight like this. Ennis started boxing, changing range on him, catching him with technical power shots.”

It sounds like Malignaggi never watched some of Stanionis’s fights. If he’d seen his bout against Radzhab Butaev in 2022, he’d have known tonight’s fight with Boots would be an easy one for the Philadelphia native. Butaev hurt Stanionis multiple times in the fight, a lot more than Ennis did tonight, and he barely lost 114-113 on one judges’ scorecard. That was easily the most accurate score of the three for the Stanionis-Butaev fight.

“It was just like, ‘Let’s bust out in center ring, Philadelphia style vs. Eastern European style.’ He was like, ‘You know what? I’m going to show you something you didn’t expect tonight, and he did it very well,” said Malignaggi about Ennis. “He beat him up doing it that way. I think that raises the curiosity again.

“He’s criticized by some people. When you’re an elite athlete, you’re criticized all over the place. When you’re at the top of the top, all kinds of opinions. The more opinions people have of you, the better, regardless if they’re good or bad. The more people that have a thought on you, it means they know you well enough to form an opinion,” said Malignaggi.