Jaron Ennis moves towards claiming control of boxing’s junior middleweight division
Jaron “Boots” Ennis put his stamp on boxing’s junior middleweight division with a convincing win over Xander Zayas on June 27. The post Jaron Ennis moves towards claiming control of boxing’s junior middleweight division appeared first on New York Amsterdam News.
Black News 
Jaron “Boots” Ennis put his stamp on boxing’s junior middleweight division with a convincing win over Xander Zayas on June 27 at Barclays Center in Brooklyn. The 29-year-old from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, stopped the 23-year-old Zayas, a native of Puerto Rico, in the seventh-round by TKO, handing him his first defeat as a professional. Zayas is now 23-1 (13 KOs) while Ennis (36-0, 32 KOs) remained undefeated.
“I wasn’t worried about nothing Xander had,” Ennis said. “I wasn’t worried about nothing at all.”
A former unified welterweight champion, Ennis stepped out of the ring with the unified WBA and WBO World junior middleweight titles and now is aiming for the IBF and WBC belts, held by Sebastian Fundora and Josh Kelly respectively.
After tasting defeat, Zayas displayed humility in his assessment of the bout.
“He won like a champion,” Zayas said of Ennis. “And I’ll take some time off, spend time with my family and come back.”
Brownsville, Brooklyn’s Bruce Carrington successfully defended his WBC featherweight title for the first time with a win over René Palacios by unanimous decision this past Saturday at the Wolstein Center in Cleveland.
“Body shots are always one of the worst shots in boxing to get caught with, but my mentality was I just had to fight on,” Carrington (18-0, 10 KOs) said regarding being hurt by Palacios (19-1-1, 10 KOs) in the 11th round.
“It’s time to start getting the featherweight division rolling, and I really want to get ready and start fighting the best in the business, and that’s whoever the champions are in the featherweight division,” Carrington said about what’s next for him.
Boxing returns to New York City on Sunday, July 26 when two Brooklynites battle at Infosys Theater at Madison Square Garden. Puerto Rican power puncher Edgar Berlanga (23-2, 18 KOs) looks to get back into the win column when he faces Steven Butler (38-5-1, 32 KOs) of Montreal, Canada, in a 10-round super middleweight battle. Berlanga last fought in July 2025 at Louis Armstrong Stadium in Queens, where he was upset by Hamzah Sheeraz via a fifth-round knockout.
Another Brooklyn native, undefeated former super lightweight champion Richardson Hitchins (20-0, 8 KOs), will take on Mexican Ricardo Salas (24-2-2, 18 KOs) in a 12-round welterweight contest. Hitchins will move up to 147 pounds. He was a late scratch in his IBF super lightweight title defense against Oscar Duarte due to an undisclosed illness in February.
Arguably the biggest name in mixed martial arts history, Conor McGregor, returns to the octagon on Saturday night. The Irishman has not competed in over five years, since losing to Dustin Poirier twice in 2021. He will face Max Holloway, whom he defeated in 2013.
The post Jaron Ennis moves towards claiming control of boxing’s junior middleweight division appeared first on New York Amsterdam News.
