How Derek ‘Bozy’ Ennis became the creator

PHILADELPHIA — The nickname came from an old woman who owned a West Philadelphia corner bar. A teenaged Derek Ennis would run errands for her, and she would throw him some pocket change, or feed him. She called him “Bo,” and it stuck. Eventually the neighborhood picked it up, and “Bo” evolved into “Bozy.” Ennis was in constant motion, running here, running there. He’s 68, though looks like he is 48, and he still hates to sit.

In Germantown, he had built a reputation as a street slap fighter. No one wanted to mess with the tall, lean kid with the fast hands. He was so elusive it was like hitting smoke. He carried the kind of gravitating spirit that once you were around him, you never wanted to leave. He carries it today.

It’s why when you walk down the rickety wooden steps of the Grant Avenue gym in Philadelphia, where Bozy works with his fighters, you will be dipped into a cacophony of thumping heavy bags, rhythmic speedbags, and the three-minute buzzer that ends each sparring session among little children running around with oversized boxing gloves, teenagers pounding the mitts, heavyweight title contenders trying to reclaim their careers, budding pros, established pros, and Bozy’s prized pupil, IBF welterweight titlist Jaron “Boots” Ennis, the youngest of his three sons.

This Saturday, Boots (31-0, 28 knockouts) will be making his first IBF 147-pound title defense against late-replacement David Avanesyan (30-4-1, 18 KOs). It will take place in his hometown, at the Wells Fargo Center in Philadelphia, in an Eddie Hearn Matchroom event on DAZN.

The division is set up for Boots, The Ring’s No. 2 welterweight contender, to take over. Ennis, 27, sits behind Ring welterweight world champion Terence “Bud” Crawford, who has let it be known he wants no parts of Boots, since “there is no money in it,” as he has told The Ring countless times, and will be fighting WBA junior middleweight titlist Israil Madrimov on Aug. 3. Errol Spence Jr., who many question whether he has fully recovered from the beating Crawford gave him, will also move to 154.

Hearn is looking to build Boots up in Philadelphia, an overrated sports town that is heavily devoted to the NFL Eagles and not much else, unless they are winning. Boots is winning. Hearn noticed a while ago. He has managed to sell 13,000 tickets for the fight around Boots’ otherworldly talents and counting on a firm fanbase to grow into crossover appeal.

At the root of everything lies the creator, Derek “Bozy” Ennis, Boots’ father, trainer and manager.

Bozy will not take any credit for Boots’ success. He does not want any. Try to engage him about himself and he would often wave you off and prefer you talk to Boots, or any of the other fighters he trains.

He had a modest pro career, going 4-2, with three knockouts as a middleweight from 1977-84. He found his calling, however, in teaching boxing.

He never likes to refer to himself as “a trainer.”

His passion was for his sons to do something in the sport he immersed himself into in his early-20s by stepping into the PAL Center at Seymour and Green Streets in Philadelphia.

Boots has gone the farthest of his three sons. Derek “Pooh” Ennis (24-5-1, 13 KOs) will be the first to admit he underachieved, and Farah (22-2, 12 KOs) went as far as the NABF super middleweight title.

None of them would be anywhere without Bozy—the man who never likes to sit.

“I got into boxing because I was a street fighter, I used to fight southpaw style, and I went over to a boxing gym around 20, 21, to find out if I was doing it right,” recalled Bozy, a Germantown High graduate. “What I mean by street fighting is we used to slap box in the streets, nothing violent where I beat up anyone. I beat people with one hand. I never used my left hand. I had six pro fights. I worked construction and a machine shop, and before that, I worked at a candy factory. It started from going to the gym to straighten my left out.”

Without any formal training, Bozy was thrown in immediately against someone with considerable experience, a Philly gym staple to assess a novice fighter’s valor.

Bozy tore the guy up.

He started training fighters when his sons were born, shaping, and molding them like Earl Woods developed Tiger Woods in golf. Bozy branched out. He began taking in anyone who was willing to train—and listen.

He would work 16-hour days between construction and the factory work. During the day, his eyes would be half-mast. Once he entered the gym at night, he woke up.

Sharon Ennis, Bozy’s wife, maintained everything else.

“She put up with a lot, and I mean a lot,” Bozy said. “If it was someone else, they would have left me a long time ago with all the stuff I was doing (laughs). I lived in the gym. Look at me today, I’m still in the gym. She is with me today. If I do something, I do it all the way. I have never done anything halfway. I learned from my parents, Walter Cooley, and my mother, Dorothy Ennis. My family on my mother’s side were a fighting family.”

His Uncle David used to work the Philly brick yards. It was rough back there in the 1950s and 1960s. He was nice with his hands when he had to be.

Though the real source was Bernette Ennis, Bozy’s maternal grandmother.

“There was a story that goes back in the day where this woman was walking down the street talking smack, and my grandmother told her not to talk like that with young kids around,” Bozy remembered. “They got into an argument and the woman pulled out a knife. My grandmother beat the mess out of that woman. The fighting came from her. She beat me. It’s where I learned how to move, to get away from her (laughs).”

Rodney Bradley is a 51-year-old disabled veteran. He has known Bozy since he was 14, in 1991. When he trims his salt-and-pepper beard, it is really hard to tell how old Bozy is. Bozy says that comes from good living.

“I don’t know what he is drinking, is it the fountain of youth, because he still looks the same as when I first met him,” Bradley said, laughing. “I train here three times a week and have known Bozy for decades. The one thing about Bozy and his kids, you can’t ask for a better boxing lineage than them. Bozy teaches not only boxing, he teaches you how to be a man. It’s why all these kids go to him. Once Bozy grabs you, you never want to leave. He genuinely cares about you.

“He has those intangibles. It’s why he likes being called teacher before he likes being called a trainer. In school, teachers know the kids that don’t like them. What I know about boxers, being around them, they know the trainers who care about them and trainers that just care about the money. To Bozy, it’s never about the money.

“Five minutes around Bozy, anyone can see he cares. The backstory you hear is Bozy was a street fighter and a good one. When I was 15, 16 years old, and I remember being in the ring with him. Trying to hit him was like trying to hit bees in a dark room with a bat. It’s where Boots gets his defense.”

Pooh, now 43, and Farah, 41, were pushed by Bozy like he pushes Boots.

“My problem was, I didn’t listen when I was younger, or would look for ways to get out of running,” said Pooh, chuckling. “None of us are where we are without my dad. He loves boxing, and I mean he truly lives and breathes boxing. My father is different from trainers today. He would rather raise a fighter than get him from another trainer. And my dad is hard. We were not a good mix.

“I hated to train (laughs). Boots loves it. When Boots isn’t training, he’s training fighters. He lives here (in the gym), like my dad. I was my own worst enemy. I had it, I relied on natural ability. I would lie and say I was going running, go out and sit in front of the train tracks. I would come back and splash water on my face and say I did a few miles. He never found out. But my dad saw me and Farah go through it. I never took boxing as seriously as I should have. I get after the young kids we work with, yelling at them, getting on their asses the way my father got on me.

“All the stuff I hated to hear from him now comes out of my mouth (laughs).”

Pooh was 16 and Farah was 14 when Boots was born. It was as if he had three fathers, Bozy, Pooh and Farah.

“Boots was spoiled rotten,” Pooh said, laughing again. “Anything Boots wanted, he got. Everyone around us, a lot of people in the city, are making this fight a big deal. Look around here, we are doing the same things we do every day. It is not that big a deal. Everyone respects everyone in here. This place is like a family. That comes from my dad.”

Each time a fighter would leave the gym, they would make sure to shake hands with everyone in the gym before departing. Call it an unspoken Bozy rule.

Christian Carto will be on the Boots-Avanesyan undercard. The 27-year-old bantamweight is 22-1, with 15 KOs, and has been working with Bozy for the last three years. He has been around Bozy since he was 15.

“I don’t think I would still be fighting if it wasn’t for Bozy,” said Carto, who has recovered from a devastating knockout loss to Victor Ruiz in 2019 and took two years off before returning. “I wasn’t having any fun. That loss was bad and I took it hard. Bozy has instilled a lot of confidence in me, but he does that with everyone. My defense is much sharper than it has ever been, and you see the atmosphere around here, that all comes from Bozy. You have white guys, black guys, young, old, women, it is like a family and Bozy is like the dad.

“Bozy is fun to be around. He lives boxing. It’s why you see him at all these Philly shows, whether he has guys on the card or not. You know as a trainer he cares about you.”

Everyone in boxing seems to know Bozy now. He gets calls from fighters around the world. In the Philadelphia boxing community, he is revered, like the Philly godfather of boxing teachers. Stephen Fulton, the former WBO and WBC junior featherweight titlist, now works with him. Jarrell “Big Baby” Miller is trying to resurrect his career with Bozy in his corner, and undefeated Cuban Olympic gold medalist Any Cruz has been with him since his pro debut. On the national boxing scene, Bozy is highly respected, just not as known as other crossover trainers. He always likes to point out that most of his fighters started with him; he has not inherited many fighters already made.

“It’s why I like to say I am more a teacher than a trainer,” Bozy said. “I love working with fighters from the ground up. I’m old-school. You do have a lot of younger guys coming up who are more conditioning coaches than teachers. The stuff I do is on my own. It goes back to the street fighter who began learning how to move and found out about the sport on the Germantown streets. I do sit down to eat though (laughs).”

He will not be sitting much on Saturday night.

Bozy will be working the corners of four of the eight fights.

Joseph Santoliquito is a Hall of Fame, award-winning sportswriter who has been working for Ring Magazine/RingTV.com since October 1997 and is the president of the Boxing Writers Association of America.
Follow @JSantoliquito

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