Ennis Stops Zayas in Seventh Round to Unify Super-Welterweight Titles

Jaron “Boots” Ennis stopped Xander Zayas at 1:49 of the seventh round on Saturday night at Barclays Center in Brooklyn, capturing the WBA and WBO super-welterweight titles. Referee Harvey Dock waved off the contest after Ennis sent Zayas to a knee for the third time. Zayas’s corner threw in the towel as the stoppage occurred.

Ennis improved to 36-0 with 32 knockouts while handing the previously unbeaten Zayas his first professional loss. Ennis dropped Zayas with a straight left late in the first round. Zayas responded in the third by landing a flush right hand that rocked Ennis and forced him to clinch.

Ennis regained control in the fifth with a left-right combination that produced the second knockdown. The decisive sequence unfolded in the seventh. Ennis trapped Zayas against the ropes and delivered a series of right hands and left hooks before the final knockdown.

Zayas beat the count but the referee intervened immediately afterward. Ennis, who turned 29 on Friday, moved up from welterweight last year and had held the WBA interim title at the weight after a first-round stoppage of Uisma Lima. Zayas, 23, had unified the WBA and WBO belts after becoming boxing’s youngest active world champion last summer.

“I put on a show for the fans and I appreciated [Zayas] taking this, because he didn’t have to,” Ennis said. ’” “I knew he would come forward, and we were ready for it,” he added. ” Zayas was transported by ambulance to a local hospital for precautionary evaluation and did not attend the post-fight news conference.

“It’s part of the business,” he said. ” The announced attendance was a sellout crowd. Ennis said after the fight that he wants Vergil Ortiz Jr. next. “Give me Vergil, or bring on them belts, it doesn’t matter who it is,” he said.