Jaron “Boots” Ennis had only positive things to say about Gervonta “Tank” Davis and Lamont Roach Jnr following their controversial March 1 draw, in which Davis took a knee in the ninth round but was not penalized by the referee.

“It was a great fight,” the IBF welterweight titleholder . Ennis scored the fight 115-113 for Davis but said he is also OK with a draw. 

“Lamont, he did a great job, actually. I just don’t think he did enough to pull it off, and I feel like people was overlooking what Tank was doing in the first five, six rounds,” Ennis said. 

Two judges did in fact score five of the first six rounds for Davis. An educated set of boxing eyes such as Ennis’ seeing something closer to what the judges saw is somewhat of a reminder that the boxing scoring criteria almost always allow for a wide range of scores.

Ennis observed that while the fight ended in a draw, the general discussion around it is as if Davis had lost. 

“People just don’t like Tank. [...] He looked sharp to me! People just be talking,” Ennis said. “At the end of the day, you can’t please everybody.”

Ennis said he thought Davis won the ninth, and that the round would have been scored 9-9 had a knockdown been called. (This is incorrect; rounds are scored on a 10-point must system, and a 9-9 score is only allowable if a fighter wins a round but is deducted a point for a foul.) But as for the missed knockdown call, Ennis was baffled.

“Anybody else, they would have made that a knockdown. I didn’t know what was going on,” Ennis said, perhaps alluding to Davis’ star power. Still, he found a more measured explanation moments later: “It might’ve been a big moment for the referee – the referee didn’t know what to do, or things like that. Mistakes happen. Things happen. It’s boxing, at the end of the day.”