Jaron “Boots” Ennis vs. Brian Norman Jr. Update: Welterweight Unification All But Dead, But…

For IBF welterweight champ Jaron “Boots” Ennis and promoter Eddie Hearn, time was crucial in putting together a unification clash with WBO 147 lb. champ Brian Norman Jr. That time, it would appear, has all but run out.

On July 31, the IBF ordered Ennis to face top contender Karen Chukhadzhian in a rematch of a deadly-dull and wildly anticlimactic January, 2023 bout. In that tedious affair, Ennis would win every round on all three judges’ scorecards, but fail to impress against the mobile and awkward Ukrainian. The stale showing had many questioning whether the rising star was as good as hyped.

To avoid that backwards-step rematch, Hearn had been pursuing a unification bout with Norman that the sanctioning body would approve ahead of the mandatory defense.

While Hearn was in pursuit of that champ vs. champ bout, however, the IBF issued a September 3 deadline for Ennis-Chukhadzhian talks to be finalized before going to purse bid. According to reports, there have been NO talks regarding that mandatory defense.

After two weeks of negotiations with Team Norman and very different public takes on those talks, it appears as though the back-and-forth has reached a dead end.

Former ESPN boxing insider Dan Rafael reported Friday morning via Twitter/X that Ennis-Norman is now dead and that Norman will be defending his title November 8 versus Derrieck Cuevas on an ESPN Keyshawn Davis card.

In a Friday morning appearance on the Boxing Brunch show, Norman’s manager Adrian Clark said that the Ennis fight was not necessarily dead and that a contract with Cuevas had not yet been signed. He also broke down the $1.5 million offer from Hearn’s Matchroom Boxing and explained how the career-high purse would be whittled down to about half of that due to an assortment of expenses, including a 20% fee paid to Norman’s promoter Top Rank for allowing the fighter to compete outside of their promotional banner.

Clark would go on to say that a $2 million offer from Hearn and Matchroom would probably get the deal done.

Without that happening, it appears that Clark is content on playing the long game with the 23-year-old Norman’s career, tossing out future plan names such as Teofimo Lopez and Devin Haney. He also brought up the possibility of unification clashes with WBC champ Mario Barrios, WBA titlist Eimantas Stanionis, as well as Ennis.

Hearn, meanwhile, has a very different take on the stalled negotiations.

“It’s frustrating because you hear what Brian Norman Sr, or his dad, is saying and none of it really makes sense,” Hearn said via his Matchroom Boxing YouTube channel. “This is a really simple situation – the first offer that was made to Brian Norman was nicely over a million dollars. They said they felt it was nowhere near.

“We’ve made two more offers, with an extra quarter of a million dollars every time, to levels that Brian Norman will never see. We keep getting told we’re close, then we go back and make another offer and then we’re told by his team that we are actually not that close.

“I start to think ‘Brian Norman, do you want this fight?’ or are you clout chasing? Do you want to be great, Brian Norman? I’m not being funny but who is Brian Norman? I know he’s a good fighter but nobody knows who Brian Norman is…

“Brian Norman has missed the boat and now he’s got to go and fight someone for peanuts that nobody has ever heard of. Boot is alright, he’s on a fortune. But Brian Norman had the chance to prove himself as a superstar but they dropped the ball.”

Hearn would even tease the possibility of vacating the IBF belt rather than face their mandatory contender, eventually conceding, though, that Ennis may just go ahead with the defense to get it out of the way– which appears to be the likely course of action without a Norman unification bout happening.