Even Eddie Hearn seemed to recognize the uselessness of Jaron Ennis’ first-round destruction of Uisma Lima on Saturday night.

Hearn fancies himself as boxing’s best promoter.

Ennis' embarrassingly easy victory over a supposed top 10 junior middleweight was so unsightly, not even one of the sport’s craftiest carnival barkers could convince dissatisfied fans and perturbed pundits that this was anything other than the gifted Philadelphia fighter pummeling another overmatched opponent he shouldn’t have fought.

DraftKings listed Ennis as a 30-1 favorite. Turns out they were too kind to Lima (14-2, 10 KOs), who was knocked down twice before referee Shawn Clark stopped their 12-round fight for the WBA interim junior middleweight title just 1:58 after the opening bell rang.

“You won’t see another fight like Lima, in my opinion, now,” Hearn said during the post-fight press conference. “Because we don’t want those kind of fights.”

No-one wants those kinds of fights for one of the most entertaining talents in the sport.

The former Ring, IBF and WBA welterweight champ has had entirely too many of them both before and after he signed with Hearn’s Matchroom Boxing in the spring of 2024. Now that he is in a division full of appealing opponents, Ennis, Hearn and DAZN executives cannot continue to waste what’s left of his physical prime with meaningless mismatches.

If Ennis (35-0, 31 KOs, 1 NC) is to go down as the generational great Hearn and many others believe he can become, the Philadelphia native needs to be matched against dangerous opponents that pose true threats to him. This is especially important if Ennis fights twice a year moving forward.

Ennis insisted Saturday night he wants that career-defining process to start by, at long last, battling rival Vergil Ortiz Jr. next, sometime early in 2026.

If Ortiz (23-0, 21 KOs) defeats Erickson Lubin (27-2, 19 KOs) on November 8 and doesn’t agree to face Ennis next, he needs to be matched against IBF champ Bakhram Murtazaliev (23-0, 17 KOs) or WBO champ Xander Zayas (22-0, 13 KOs) in his first fight of 2026.

Hearn will undoubtedly try to pit Ennis versus newly crowned WBA champ Abass Baraou (17-1, 9 KOs) if Ortiz beats Lubin and doesn’t want to fight Ennis next.

Baraou’s upset of Yoenis Tellez was impressive. He should still be option C for Ennis if the Ortiz fight doesn’t happen, even if it means overpaying, within reason, to get Murtazaliev or Zayas in the ring.

This scenario doesn’t account for the Sebastian Fundora-Keith Thurman winner because their fight is expected to be rescheduled for early 2026 as well.

Regardless, Ennis was granted the one junior middleweight fight he requested to get acclimated to his new weight class. The people paying him would’ve preferred a more formidable foe than Lima, but acquiesced to what suited Ennis.

To be fair, Hearn offered Serhii Bohachuk a seven-figure purse to box Ennis on Saturday night. Before Bohachuk lost again to Brandon Adams on September 13, he dropped Ortiz twice on his way to losing a majority decision 14 months ago.

Top welterweights previously dismissed Ennis as a high-risk, low-reward proposition when he was a non-PBC fighter appearing on Showtime cards before the network exited the boxing business at the end of 2023.

Pound-for-pound king Terence Crawford even avoided a fight with Ennis because the five-division champion claimed beating Ennis wouldn’t do anything to enhance his legacy. Ennis also tried to box WBO champ Brian Norman Jr. in what would’ve been a welterweight title unification fight 11 months ago, but their teams couldn’t agree on Norman’s purse.

Nevertheless, Ennis has beaten huge underdogs in three of his four fights since Matchroom signed him.

He stopped David Avanesyan (31-5-1, 19 KOs), whom Crawford violently knocked out in the sixth round 19 months earlier, after the fifth round of his Matchroom debut 15 months ago.

Ennis’ decision to proceed with a ridiculous rematch against Karen Chukhadzhian on the night he hoped to fight Norman was one of the more perplexing pieces of matchmaking in recent boxing history.

The IBF inexplicably ordered that rematch less than two years after Ennis shut out Ukraine’s Chukhadzhian (25-3, 13 KOs) on all three scorecards. Ennis fought the 29-year-old again, for a purse in excess of $2 million, because his ultimate goal was to become undisputed welterweight champion.

He was more aware than anyone, of course, that squeezing his 5-foot-10 frame down to 147 pounds was becoming increasingly unhealthy and unsustainable. To his credit, that didn’t prevent Ennis from dismantling former WBA champ Eimantas Stanionis (16-1, 9 KOs, 1 NC) in their title unification fight April 12 at Boardwalk Hall in Atlantic City, Jersey.

As electrifying as Ennis was that night against the unbeaten Stanionis, that was the exception to matching Ennis since he partnered with Matchroom, not the norm. After overwhelming Lima in a mismatch that obviously shouldn’t have been made, that cannot continue if Ennis is to achieve the greatness Hearn and many others see in him.

Diego Pacheco’s last three opponents had a combined record of 74-1 when they agreed to fight him.

Pacheco (24-0, 18 KOs), The Ring’s No. 5-ranked contender in the super middleweight division, will also face an undefeated fighter for the second time in his past three fights. It still seemed underwhelming when Kevin Lele Sadjo was announced as Pacheco’s next opponent during DAZN’s stream of the Ennis-Lima card Saturday night.

France’s Sadjo (26-0, 23 KOs) will take one of boxing’s highest knockout ratios (88 percent) into a main event DAZN will stream December 13 from Adventist Health Arena in Stockton, California. Sadjo’s record appears padded though, and at 35 he remains unproven against legitimate contenders.

Sadjo is ranked No. 8 by the WBO, five spots below Pacheco. The Cameroon-born French veteran isn’t in The Ring’s top 10 and is completely unknown among American fight fans. Beating him will do little to enhance Pacheco’s position in his division.

Assuming the favored Pacheco wins, his 2025 would consist of victories over Steven Nelson (20-2, 16 KOs), Trevor McCumby (28-2, 21 KOs) and Sadjo.

Nelson was stopped by Raiko Santana (13-4, 7 KOs) in the first round of his following fight last month on the Canelo Alvarez-Terence Crawford undercard.

McCumby can punch, but Caleb Plant beat him by ninth-round technical knockout before Pacheco comfortably out-pointed him on July 19 in Frisco, Texas.

As impressive as the 24-year-old Pacheco performs at times, the tall boxer-puncher’s reluctance to test himself against the sport’s most dangerous super middleweights makes it seem as if the Los Angeles native is simply waiting to fight a nondescript contender for the WBO 168-pound crown whenever Crawford vacates it.

■ Sebastian Fundora’s hand injury prevented him and Jesus Ramos from remaining unusually active PBC fighters. Had Fundora fought Keith Thurman on October 25 in Las Vegas, it would’ve marked the WBC junior middleweight champion’s third fight in seven months.

Comparatively, Thurman has fought just twice since his 12-round, split-decision defeat to Manny Pacquiao in July 2019. Ramos, slated to face Shane Mosley Jr. for the WBC interim middleweight title on the undercard, would’ve fought for the third time in eight months.

■ Imagine O’Shaquie Foster’s frustration when learning of Fundora’s hand injury. His fight with Stephen Fulton was the co-feature on the Fundora-Thurman undercard.

It should be rescheduled sometime soon, but Foster hasn’t fought since he won back the WBC junior lightweight title from Robson Conceicao in their immediate rematch last November 2 in Verona, New York. Foster-Fulton had already been pushed back from August 16 to October 25 because Gervonta Davis decided to fight Jake Paul, rather than proceeding with his rematch against Lamont Roach.

■ In case you missed it, Chinese heavyweight contender Zhilei “Big Bang” Zhang oddly called out Derek Chisora in an Instagram video last week.

With George Michael’s “Careless Whisper” playing in the background, Zhang challenged Chisora to choose him as the opponent for the brash Brit’s 50th professional fight December 13 in Manchester, England. “I want to bang you,” Zhang said. “Maybe you want to bang me, too.” All cringeworthy wordplay aside, Chisora-Zhang would be a fun fight between a pair of 40-something-year-olds.

Keith Idec is a senior writer and columnist for The Ring. He can be reached on X @idecboxing.