Weekend Boxing Notebook: Zepeda and Ennis Turn Heads With Quick KOs

Smashing performances by Jose Zepeda and Jaron “Boots” Ennis were attention-grabbers on the final weekend of October. Zepeda blasted out Josue Vargas at the Hulu Theater at Madison Square Garden in a fight that was over in 105 seconds. It took Boots Ennis four seconds longer to dismiss Thomas Dulorme.

SoCal southpaw Zepeda (35-2, 27 KOs) was actually the underdog to Vargas, a Bronx resident of Puerto Rican descent who was fighting on his home turf and whose only loss in 20 pro fights had come on a disqualification. Late money boosted the Boricua into a 7/5 favorite.

Although Zepeda is a two-time world title challenger, he is best known for his Oct. 3, 2020 donnybrook with Ivan Baranchyk. The runaway choice for the Fight of the Year, it was the sort of battle that shortens a boxer’s career. Baranchyk was a shell of his former self when he returned to the ring in Cleveland against Montana Love, and Zepeda was underwhelming in his first fight back, a drab, albeit winning, effort against 37-year-old journeyman Henry Lundy.

Against Vargas, Zepeda went from underwhelming to overwhelming. A smashing left to the chin put Vargas on the canvas and when he arose, he was pummeled by a series of unanswered punches, forcing the stoppage.

There were a lot of unexpected developments on Saturday’s wildly entertaining Top Rank show. The 10-round co-feature between bantamweights Jonas Sultan and Carlos Caraballo was a humdinger and produced an upset of larger proportions when Sultan emerged victorious by identical 94-93 scores.

Sultan, a Filipino, was 17-4 heading in. Caraballo, a Puerto Rican, was 14-0 and had won all 14 of his fights by knockout. Sultan had him on the deck four times and needed every one of those knockdowns to eke out the victory.

As covered in the TSS ringside report, Boots Ennis lived up to his hype and then some in his Las Vegas debut, advancing his record to 28-0 with his 26^th knockout. Perhaps he isn’t the best welterweight on the planet, but one would be hard-pressed to name a welterweight with a bigger punch.

Fanlong Meng

The pandemic has wreaked havoc with the careers of many boxers. Fanlong Meng is Exhibit A.

Meng turned pro in Connecticut after representing China in the 2012 Olympics. He gradually crawled up the ratings to where he was the IBF’s mandatory challenger for IBF/WBC light heavyweight title-holder Artur Beterbiev. They were to meet on March 28 of last year in Quebec City.

That would be one of the first pro boxing shows killed off by the pandemic. The match was rescheduled for Sept. 25, 2020 in Ekaterinburg, Russia, but that fight too fell out. Had Meng taken the assignment, he would have literally been trapped in Russia by COVID-related travel restrictions.

The IBF subsequently removed Meng from its ratings for inactivity.

Beterbiev wasn’t similarly hampered. In March of this year, he defended his belts with a 10^th-round stoppage of Germany’s Adam Deines in Moscow, a man that Meng had defeated. He will return to the ring on Dec. 17 in his adopted hometown of Montreal against Marcus Browne.

As for Fenlong Meng, after being out of the ring for two full years, he returned this past Friday on a show in Kissimmee, Florida, where he won a 10-round unanimous decision over Israel Duffus, an obscure LA-based Panamanian. Meng vs. Duffus wasn’t even the main event.

Meng is undefeated (17-0, 10 KOs) but, in truth, he isn’t that special. He had scant chance of de-throning the heavy-handed Beterbiev. However, that’s not the point. The pandemic denied him his first good payday and, at age 33, he is running out of time. He’s been living and training in Florida with a wife and child back in China and with little to show for his dedication. As the old saying goes, if he didn’t have bad luck, he wouldn’t have any luck at all.

Rolly Romero

Some of the weekend’s news stories concerned developments outside the ring. It isn’t yet official, but various sources say that Rolly Romero is out as Gervonta “Tank” Davis’s next opponent. They were to meet on Sunday, Dec. 5 at the Staples Center in Los Angeles on SHOWTIME pay-per-view. A world title-holder in three weight classes, Davis would be defending his WBA world lightweight title.

Things broke bad for Romero when a 24-year-old Las Vegas woman, Izabel Zambrano, went public on her social media accounts about an incident that allegedly occurred in the fall of 2019 at Romero’s Henderson, Nevada apartment. Other women have come forward with similar allegations, painting the 26-year-old Romero as a serial sexual predator.

Romero is 14-0 (12 KOs). A North Las Vegas native, he is a second-generation prizefighter. His father was reportedly a three-time national amateur champion in Cuba.

Romero’s pro career got a boost when he hooked up with Floyd Mayweather whose firm promotes Gervonta Davis. After Romero opened his career 9-0, this blurb appeared on Mayweather’s “Money Team” twitter page: “(Rolly Romero) has amassed a large following on social media with his alluring personality and a massive fan base around the world in awe of his power and growing skills.”

Mexico City’s Isaac Cruz, 23, is considered the favorite to fill the vacant slot. The once-beaten Cruz is unbeaten in his last 17 fights. His signature win was a 53-second blowout of former world title challenger Diego Magdaleno. In his last outing, On June 19 in Houston, Cruz won a unanimous 10-round decision over 36-year-old warhorse Fernando Vargas.

Gervonta Davis made the turnstiles hum fighting in Baltimore and Atlanta, but has yet to prove that he has the pull to be a pay-per-view attraction, let alone a PPV attraction against a little-known opponent. It wouldn’t surprise us if his Dec. 5 fight is reduced to a “regular” SHOWTIME offering.

At press time, Henderson police had yet to file charges against Romero. One wonders if the powers-that-be would have been so quick to axe him if he had been the “A” side.

Photo credit: Mikey Williams / Top Rank for Getty Images

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