It is the type of fight boxing routinely claims to want and too rarely delivers. When Jaron “Boots” Ennis and Xander Zayas step into the ring at Barclays Center on Saturday night, they will be putting more on the line than their undefeated records. They will be risking the carefully cultivated aura of inevitability that has surrounded both men since they were teenagers.
In an era when the most promising fighters are routinely steered around danger rather than toward it, Ennis and Zayas have chosen a different road. The result is one of the year’s most compelling fights: a showdown between two undefeated champions tabbed for stardom since adolescence whose reputations still outpace their résumés.
