ATLANTIC CITY \u2013 Eimantas Stanionis is missing the birth of his first child to fight for the WBA and IBF welterweight titles against Jaron \u201cBoots\u201d Ennis. <\/p>\n
The Lithuanian\u2019s wife Emily is due to give birth to their daughter on Thursday, two days before he enters the biggest fight of his career at the Boardwalk Hall in Atlantic City, and against the toughest opponent of the 16 he will have fought.<\/p>\n
Stanionis and Emily have been married for less than a year, but they have been together for 13, and as a consequence she has attended almost all of his professional contests.<\/p>\n
Victory on Saturday against one of the world\u2019s most admired fighters would prove transformative for the 30 year old, his wife and their daughter whose name he is keeping secret but which will be visible on the gloves he wears to the ring.<\/p>\n
They have been living separately since he flew to Los Angeles to train at Freddie Roach\u2019s revered Wild Card Boxing Club, and she has therefore had to negotiate perhaps the most testing period of her first pregnancy without her husband by her side.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cShe\u2019s still holding the baby \u2013 maybe the baby will wait for me, because it has to come any day now,\u201d Stanionis told BoxingScene. \u201cWe talk about sacrifices \u2013 that\u2019s the one thing.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cYou leave the country \u2013 it\u2019s like 10 hours\u2019 [time] difference. You come to Los Angeles \u2013 I need to prepare myself. It\u2019s tough for her and for me, but she knows that I love the sport and that it\u2019s a big fight. She said, \u2018Just go and do your thing \u2013 I\u2019ll take care of her\u2019. We both have fights.\u201d<\/p>\n
Stanionis then exhaled before he said: \u201cIt\u2019s tough, but it\u2019s opportunities and sacrifices \u2013 if you want to achieve something it\u2019s never easy. For some, maybe, but not for me.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe had a talk when we found out everything, and got a [fight] date. Before it was a different date, then another one. It\u2019s like, \u2018Nothing can be worse than this\u2019, but we had a talk; she supported me. She said, \u2018Go \u2013 if it\u2019ll be on time it\u2019ll be on time, if not\u2026\u2019.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m not nervous [about the pregnancy]. I blocked everything [out]; I\u2019m happy that I don\u2019t need to support her and say, \u2018Everything will be fine\u2019. She\u2019s tough as hell, so I\u2019m very lucky I don\u2019t need to worry about that.<\/p>\n
\u201cDuring Covid she also missed some of the fights but she [otherwise] comes to the fights. For sure [I prefer her to be present] \u2013 she takes care of the stuff and makes me happy \u2013 social media; tickets; friends; my mum; everything. She\u2019s still doing that, over there. Since day one, I came to America for a professional career \u2013 we were living apart but she would come to all my fights.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cI wouldn\u2019t be sad [to have missed the birth] because it\u2019s life \u2013 it\u2019s never perfect. Never the best time or worst time; I\u2019ll be happy that she\u2019s healthy; that\u2019s most important. That\u2019s it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Stanionis arrived in nearby Philadelphia from Los Angeles on Tuesday evening, having once, as a child, briefly made the 27-year-old Ennis\u2019s home city his home.<\/p>\n
\u201cI lived here,\u201d he said. \u201cWe moved with family; we were supposed to live here but it didn\u2019t work out. It was strange. I was a kid \u2013 I was 12 years old. They took me to the United States and we were supposed to live there. I was there for two months, because with an ESTA we could come for three.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s for sure,\u201d the WBA champion then responded when asked if he believed the coming days could prove the best of his life. \u201cI would love to get a victory, then on Sunday fly home, and then straight to the hospital on Monday when I land. That would be perfect.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cGreat fight. I\u2019ll give all my heart, and that\u2019s it. Hopefully I\u2019ll get the victory.\u201d<\/p>\n
Declan Warrington has been writing about boxing for the British and Irish national newspapers since 2010. He is also a long-term contributor to Boxing News, Boxing News Presents and Talksport, and formerly the boxing correspondent for the Press Association, a pundit for BoxNation and a regular contributor to Boxing Monthly, Sport and The Ring, among other publications. In 2023, he conducted the interviews and wrote the script for the audio documentary \u201cFroch-Groves: The Definitive Story\u201d; he is also a member of the BWAA. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"ATLANTIC CITY \u2013 Eimantas Stanionis is missing the birth of his first child to fight for the WBA…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":7199,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4108],"tags":[1935,4312,4314,4313,79,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-7198","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-boxing","8":"tag-boxing","9":"tag-eimantas-stanionis","10":"tag-ennis-vs-stanionis","11":"tag-jaron-ennis","12":"tag-sports","13":"tag-uk","14":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114312484149748622","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7198","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=7198"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7198\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7199"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7198"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7198"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7198"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}