Tonight’s Live Results: Ennis Vs. Stanionis – From Atlantic City

Round 1: Ennis is looking like a junior middleweight tonight, huge in the ring, peppering the smaller Stanioning with shots. Dominating round by Ennis.

Round 2: Stanionis getting tagged by jabs and left hands from Boots, who is looking cocky. Stanioning connected with a big left to the head of Ennis. However, the remainder of the round was all Ennis.

Round 3: Boots gets hit hard by a right hand from Eimantas after using an illegal stiff arm. Ennis landing some good shots on Stanionis, but getting hit hard in return. One big right from Stanionis snapped Boot’s head back.

Round 4: Eimantas cut slightly over his right eye. Not too bad. Ennis clowning in this round, playing to the pro-Enns crowd, and landing potshots. It’s his round, but he’s wasting energy.

Round 5: Early in the round, Stanionis got the better of Ennis. In the second half, Boots took over, bloodying his nose after landing a flurry of shots. At the end of the round, Ennis looks confident.

Round 6: Ennis drops Stanionis late after hurting him to the body and landing a barrage of punches. After the round ended, Stanionis’ corner waves it off.

Live Updates

– Super featherweight contender Raymond Ford (17-1-1, 8 KOs) defeated veteran Thomas Mattice (22-5-1, 17 KOs), winning a wide 10-round unanimous decision in the dull co-feature bout.  A truly awful fight and a wasted opportunity for Ford to try and shine. Fans at ringside sporadically booed both fighters in the championship rounds for failing to fight aggressively. After 10 boring rounds, the judges’ scores were 100-90, 100-90, and 100-90. Ford dominated but failed to entertain and put away the 34-year-old Mattice.

Ford-Mattice Final Punch Stats

Raymond Ford: 128 of 510 for 25% connect rate
Thomas Mattice: 24 of 126 for 19%

The former WBA featherweight champion Ford, 26, outlanded Mattice by a wide margin, but he couldn’t hurt him due to his lack of power. Even when the Matchroom-promoter Ford was fighting at 126, he had very little power, but at 130, he doesn’t have enough pop in his punches to hurt guys. Mattice looked gunshy throughout the fight. Going into the tenth, Mattice’s corner tried to motivate him go let his hands go, but he was still pretty meek in the final round.

Ford could face Eduardo ‘Sugar’ Nunez next. That’s going to be a very hard fight for Ford because Nunez (27-1, 27 KOs) is a bigger puncher than Nick Ball, the guy that beat him last year, and it could be a nightmarish fight for him if he tries to trade. Nunez will punch holes through Ford with the way he fought tonight.

– In another mismatch on tonight’s undercard, junior middleweight prospect Omari Jones (2-0, 2 KOs) knocked out William Jackson (13-6-2, 5 KOs) in the first round. The 2024 Olympian Jones dropped the 36-year-old Jackson with a right-hand body shot. Referee David Franciosi counted out Jackson at 1:47 of the round.

Matchroom Boxing’s matchmakers need to focus on making more competitive fights for the undercards because tonight’s card has seen the A-side prospects slaughtering no-hopers who look like they don’t belong in the same ring with them.

“I was looking in this fight to get some rounds,” said Omari Jones. “I was in the corner, and I was moving. He came out strong, aggressive, looking to land big shots. I was hoping [he’d get up], but he didn’t. So, on with the next one. I’m built for this, and I’m going to keep on shining. I’m still growing and filling out. That was the plan with Eddie: to stay busy. We’ll see what Eddie has for me next.”

With Omari Jones’s Olympic experience, he’s ready to start fighting contenders. He doesn’t need to fight low-level opposition like we saw tonight. That’s a step backward from the kind of guys that Jones was fighting in the amateurs.

– Unbeaten welterweight contender Shakhram Giyasov (17-0, 10 KOs) stopped Franco Ocampo (17-3, 8 KOs) in the fourth round. The 2016 Olympic silver medalist Giyasov dropped Ocampo with a right to the body in the fourth that sent him down. The referee counted out Ocampo. The time of the stoppage was 1:57 in the fourth.

Giyasov knocked Ocampo down in the first round. In the third round, he hurt the Argentinian Ocampo with a left to the body but failed to follow up with an additional shot. The size difference between Shakhram and Oscampo was considerable. The 31-year-old Giyasov looked like a junior middleweight fighting a welterweight. There was too much of a skill and size difference between them for Ocampo to have any shot at winning.

Giyasov is the WBA mandatory for welterweight champion Eimantas Stanionis. The winner of tonight’s fight between Eimantas and Jaron Ennis will either need to fight Giyasov next or give him a step aside.

“Each fight is for my daughter,” said Shakhram about his daughter, who recently passed away. “I promised to my daughter that I would be world champion.”

– Super featherweight prospect Zaquin Moses (3-0, 2 KO) knocked out Alex Pallette (1-4, 1 KO) in the second round of a scheduled four-round contest. The southpaw Moses, 19, connected with a left hand to the head of Pallete, causing him to take a knee. Although Palletete appeared to beat the count by getting up at nine, the referee, David Franciosi, chose to wave it off anyway. The time of the stoppage was at the 2:13 mark. There weren’t enough shots being thrown back by the 5’11” Puerto Rican-born Pallette to gauge the Newark, New Jersey native Zaquin’s talent. Moses showed excellent power in his left hand, but he didn’t use his right hand enough to show if he can punch with that hand, too. At 5’9″, Moses is tall for the 130-lb division. It’s likely he’ll soon be fighting at lightweight, where things will be more difficult.

– Welterweight Tahmir Smalls (14-0, 10 KOs) obliterated his overmatched opponent, Earl Bascombe (13-2, 2 KOs), scoring a lightning-quick first-round knockout. The lanky-looking Smalls jumped on Bascome from the opening bell, staggering him with a left hook to the head. In a follow-up barrage of heavy shots, Smalls, 25, flattened Bascome with a left hand. Referee Charlie Fitch waved it off after it was clear that Bascombe wouldn’t get back up. The official time was 1:13 in round one.

– Super bantamweight prospect Arturo Cardenas (16-0, 9 KOs) had a tougher time than expected in knocking out ring-rusty Edgar Joe Cortes (9-8-1, 1 KOs) in the eighth round. The time of the stoppage was at 1:30 of the round.

In the eighth round, Cardenas dropped Cortes with a right hand, causing referee Charlie Fitch to stop the fight. It looked like a premature stoppage. Cortes had been knocked down with a right hand from Arturo in the seventh round, and had be dropped in the fifth as well. That was a slip, but the referee, Fitch, mistakenly ruled it a knockout.

The performance is a red flag that Cardenas isn’t the fighter that Matchroom is hoping he’ll be. For him to struggle like this against this level of opponent it suggests that he’s not going to go far.