The rest of the welterweight division can officially take a deep breath.<\/p>\n
Jaron Ennis has long been interested in fully unifying the welterweight titles, but he officially gave up on that dream Wednesday. Ennis<\/a>, who will turn 28 next week, announced through his X account that he will give up his Ring, IBF and WBA 147-pound championships to move up to the junior middleweight division for his next fight.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s time,\u201d Ennis wrote. \u201cY\u2019all said this where the smoke at right? Let\u2019s have it then!\u201d<\/p>\n Eddie Hearn, his promoter, said last week that Ennis (34-0, 30 KOs, 1 NC) would move up <\/a>and that an announcement was imminent.<\/p>\n Ennis\u2019 entrance into the 154-pound division ends what at times was a frustrating run at welterweight.<\/p>\n He was forced to wait his turn as Errol Spence Jr.<\/a> and Terence Crawford<\/a> ran the division. He eventually won welterweight titles, but he never faced either. Crawford dominated Spence almost two years ago to become the first fully unified welterweight champ of the four-belt era.<\/p>\n It wasn\u2019t until Spence exited stage left and Crawford moved up in weight that Ennis was given the chance to step up.<\/p>\n After being elevated from interim IBF champion to full titleholder, Ennis finally fought his first champion in Eimantas Stanionis<\/a> (15-1, 9 KOs, 1 NC). He battered the normally durable Lithuanian, outclassed and eventually stopped him after the sixth round April 12 <\/a>at Boardwalk Hall in Atlantic City, New Jersey.<\/p>\n After adding The Ring and WBA belts to his IBF title that night, Ennis held out hope that he could get the rest of the division\u2019s champions to face him. And while it was a possibility, he’s officially done waiting.<\/p>\n Hearn said last week after meeting with Ennis that he was convinced that the unified champ would move up. Until Wednesday, Ennis had remained quiet.<\/p>\n As for his next opponent, that\u2019s a difficult one to pin down.<\/p>\n Sebastian Fundora<\/a> (WBC) and Bakhram Murtazaliev<\/a> (IBF) are junior middleweight champions. Xander Zayas<\/a>, former WBO champ Tim Tszyu <\/a>and former unified champ Jermell Charlo<\/a> are also lurking in the background. <\/p>\n Still, with Ennis\u2019 body needing a reprieve, he\u2019ll finally get one. He believes that the wiggle room he\u2019ll be given on the scales will lead to another championship run, no matter who stands in front of him.<\/p>\n \u201cTwo weight division champ,\u201d Ennis stated, \u201cfour-time world champ loading.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The rest of the welterweight division can officially take a deep breath. Jaron Ennis has long been interested…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":196249,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4108],"tags":[1935,10188,10181,10187,10186,10179,4496,10182,10183,10184,10185,10180,10193,10192,10175,10173,10174,10190,10176,10172,10194,10189,79,10191,10171,10178,16,15,10177],"class_list":{"0":"post-196248","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-boxing","8":"tag-boxing","9":"tag-boxing-community","10":"tag-boxing-fights","11":"tag-boxing-history","12":"tag-boxing-interviews","13":"tag-boxing-magazine","14":"tag-boxing-news","15":"tag-boxing-photos","16":"tag-boxing-rankings","17":"tag-boxing-results","18":"tag-boxing-schedule","19":"tag-boxing-videos","20":"tag-disqualification","21":"tag-draw","22":"tag-fight","23":"tag-fighter","24":"tag-fighter-news","25":"tag-knockout","26":"tag-latest-boxing-matches","27":"tag-ring","28":"tag-ring-magazine","29":"tag-split-decision","30":"tag-sports","31":"tag-technical-knockout","32":"tag-the-ring","33":"tag-top-fighters","34":"tag-uk","35":"tag-united-kingdom","36":"tag-upcoming-boxing-matches"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":"Validation failed: Text character limit of 500 exceeded"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/196248","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=196248"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/196248\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/196249"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=196248"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=196248"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=196248"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}