Jaron “Boots” Ennis was extremely impressive in victory over Eimantas Stanionis.

I’d expected a virtuoso performance – he had long appeared the type of fighter who would rise to the challenges in front of him – and I believed that he respected Stanionis and would be well prepared. 

I also believed that he wasn’t being held back by the IBF’s second-day weigh-in, and so that by not having to do that before fighting Stanionis he was likelier to be able to perform to his best.

He fought like a champion in great shape, and who had made the weight comfortably. In the past he’s been guilty of starting slowly, but against Stanionis he was firing on all cylinders from the opening round. 

Ennis’ style was certain to prove challenging for Stanionis. He’s a free-flowing, stance-switching, power puncher with hand speed. He’s got good feet and he can use them, but instead of winning on points he’d rather stay in front of his opponents and beat them up. 

Stanionis wants to fight in the pocket, but Ennis’ ability to fight out of the Philly shell and to aggressively counterpunch made Stanionis’ evening particularly difficult. Stanionis landed some really good shots, but Ennis responded by throwing even bigger ones. He makes his opponents pay when they succeed.

Errol Spence was like that in his youth. If opponents hit him he shrugged it off – he was bigger and stronger than them, and he couldn’t be hurt. When Danny Garcia fought him, everything Garcia landed got absorbed. Ennis has that same toughness, and he complements it with such an aesthetically-pleasing style that he’s become my favourite fighter to watch. He does everything so smoothly and effectively – it’s almost like a dance, and yet it’s violent, and aggressive. 

Stanionis is the nature of fighter who also beats his opponents up. He wears opponents down via his engine and aggression, but he had zero momentum, and couldn’t earn respect from Ennis.

More than being beaten physically, he appeared beaten mentally, because of that. His trainer Marvin Somodio made the right call in pulling him out at the end of the sixth round. He was watching Stanionis get hurt more and more, and knew the direction the fight was going in. I know Marvin, and I know how much he cares about his fighters, and also about how positive his relationship with Stanionis is. He cares about his fighters and their strengths and weaknesses – he knows Stanionis as a man and a fighter, and he not only knew that Stanionis’ night wasn’t going to get any easier, he could see that Ennis was becoming more damaging and dangerous. 

The body punch Ennis landed shortly before then was brutal. He also saw the blood trickling from Stanionis’ nose and landed a succession of uppercuts on it to damage it more. 

This was the first time we’d seen Ennis perform at the highest level. It was a fight between the world’s number one and number two welterweights, but the difference between the number one and the number two was vast. Stanionis is still a good fighter, but Ennis, simply, is very, very good. 

I believe he beats Brian Norman Jnr and Mario Barrios, the division’s other champions. He’s so good he could well beat them on the same night. Stanionis would give every other welterweight a good fight and maybe even beat them. It’s Ennis who’s on a different level – which we’ll see for years to come.

As with Terence Crawford and Floyd Mayweather before him, Ennis ought to be considered the finest welterweight of his era. But they had the rivals they needed to prove their greatness – Ennis doesn’t have the opposition at 147lbs who can enhance his legacy.

The only reason for him to remain at welterweight is to win the undisputed title, which he should still try to do, for the achievement. Once he’s done so, if that means him having beaten Norman Jnr and Barrios, he should then move up and prove how great he really is. 

There’s a lot of talented fighters at 154lbs. If he can take those out as well, we’d be talking about Ennis as an all-time great. It’s not just what a fighter accomplishes, it’s who they beat, and how they beat them. By then, comparisons with Crawford would be deserved.

I fully expect Ennis to unify at 147lbs, but it’s much harder to predict he’ll do the same at 154lbs because of who he’d be competing with. The reality is also that he’s been hit cleanly in each of his fights – just because welterweights can’t hurt him, it doesn’t mean that junior middleweights won’t.

It may be that he fights like that at 147lbs because he knows he can’t be hurt. But if he doesn’t make adjustments at 154lbs, like Crawford did as he moved up, it’s going to be much harder for him to be as dominant. The very, very best are always good defensively.

The first time I met him I remember shaking his hand and being eye-to-eye with him. I’m 5ft 11ins, which is tall for a welterweight, but I didn’t only see that he was tall – I saw wide shoulders, a heavily muscled chest and back, and thick legs. Ennis and Spence are the two biggest welterweights I’ve ever seen – I don’t know how they made the weight. 

The day, regardless, will come when Ennis ends up at middleweight. He’s also entering his physical prime, and deserves to be on pound-for-pound lists everywhere.