Brian Norman Jr didn’t think Jaron Ennis was serious about fighting him next once Eddie Hearn demanded Norman sign a contract before he faced Jin Sasaki.

Norman’s team informed Ennis’ promoter that they gladly would’ve negotiated again after the unbeaten WBO welterweight champion fought Sasaki on Thursday night in Tokyo. Hearn questioned Norman’s intentions after he was told Norman wanted to fully focus on defending his WBO belt against Japan’s Sasaki before talking about a unification fight versus Ennis.

Norman dismissed Hearn’s approach as a promotional ploy during an interview with The Ring following his brutal 5th-round knockout of Sasaki at Ota City General Gymnasium. The Conyers, Georgia native contended that Ennis knew he would move up to the junior middleweight division and never planned to fight Norman next.

“I got that sense as soon as Eddie Hearn said what he said about I can only sign the contract before this fight [with Sasaki],” Norman told The Ring. “It was like, dang! We couldn’t talk literally right now when we were supposed to fight in, what did he say, October, November? We still couldn’t do that now? I feel like they were planning that, trying to paint that narrative of me being a duck again, so that they could smoothly walk out [of the welterweight division] without fighting me.”

Hearn condemned Norman (28-0, 22 KOs, 1 NC) and his handlers for passing late last summer on what would’ve been a career-high payday of approximately $1.7 milllion to face Ennis (34-0, 30 KOs, 1 NC) in a welterweight title unification fight November 9 at Wells Fargo Center in Ennis’ hometown of Philadelphia. Ennis instead made an inexplicably mandated defense of his IBF title that night against Ukraine’s Karen Chukhadzhian (25-3, 13 KOs), whom Ennis shut out on all three scorecards 22 months earlier.

Ennis unanimously out-pointed Chukhadzhian again in their 12-round rematch. He considered moving up to junior middleweight after that bout because he had so much difficulty getting down to the welterweight limit of 147 pounds.

Still driven to become boxing’s second fully unified welterweight champion of the four-belt era, Ennis added The Ring and WBA belts to his IBF championship April 12, when he dominated previously unbeaten Lithuanian Eimantas Stanionis (15-1, 9 KOs, 1 NC) at Boardwalk Hall in Atlantic City, New Jersey. A sharp, strong Ennis dropped Stanionis in the sixth round, after which the former champion’s corner men stopped their 12-round bout because he had taken too much punishment.

Ennis still needed to win the WBO belt from Norman and the WBC crown from the winner of the Mario Barrios-Manny Pacquiao fight next month to achieve his long-stated goal. He ultimately determined that the physical sacrifices to make 147 pounds were hindering his performances too much and announced Wednesday that he will move up the junior middleweight limit of 154 for his next fight.

“I was slightly disappointed,” Norman said. “I did wanna fight him at ’47, but it may happen in the future at ’54. I believe he’ll be there for a minute or two and I’ll be up there. But for the time being I’ll make my noise down here at ’47, take over, knock everybody’s name off the list and let everybody know that ‘B-Norm The Storm’ is here. The Norman Experience has commenced and y’all fittin’ to fall.”

Sasaki (19-2-1, 17 KOs) fell twice in the first round and was viciously knocked unconscious by Norman’s picturesque left hook early in the fifth round. Norman shifted his focus to the Barrios-Pacquiao winner now that Ennis has left the welterweight division, but not before he doubted the legitimacy of Hearn’s offer for him to face Ennis in October or November.

“You tell me if this make sense – why can I only sign the contract before this fight [with Sasaki]?,” Norman said. “If that’s the case, and we was gonna fight after this, why did he announce he was gonna move up literally [during] my fight week twice? I think Eddie Hearn said it and then he said it literally [Wednesday]. And another thing was he said the doctor said he wasn’t performing at his best. What does the doctor really test? What does a doctor test that say that you’re not performing at your best? Your blood sugar? Your glucose level? What do they check? How do you determine that you’re only performing at 30 or 40 percent?”