Eddie Hearn hopes Vergil Ortiz is as serious about boxing Jaron Ennis next as his promoter, Oscar De La Hoya, led Hearn to believe over the summer.

Ennis and his promoter plan to find out in person Saturday night, when they’ll sit ringside for Ortiz’s intriguing DAZN main event versus Erickson Lubin at Dickies Arena in Fort Worth, Texas. If Ortiz beats Lubin, a much more formidable opponent than Ennis defeated last month, Hearn expects Ennis to learn as soon as possible if the former Ring/IBF/WBA welterweight champ can count on Ortiz to help him deliver one of the fights fans most want to see sometime in the first quarter of 2026.

From Hearn’s perspective, the fact that Ennis versus Ortiz wouldn’t be a legitimate title fight shouldn’t matter to either fighter or fans who’ve wanted to see them square off for a few years.

“You always wanna win a world title,” Hearn told The Ring, “but the fact is the best fight in the 154-pound division that can get made is Boots against Vergil Ortiz.”

Oscar De La Hoya has reiterated in recent weeks that he wants to match Ortiz (23-0, 21 KOs) against Ennis (35-0, 31 KOs, 1 NC). “The Golden Boy” knows, though, that Lubin is a live underdog in their 12-round fight for Ortiz’s WBC interim super welterweight title.

Hearn has grown tired of retelling the story of how he, De La Hoya, Golden Boy president Eric Gomez and DAZN executives sat in a room in New York and agreed upon what Hearn considered the framework for a deal for an Ennis-Ortiz fight.

“We were asked by DAZN to make that fight,” Hearn said. “We all sat in a room, you know, I’ve said it before in a hundred interviews. We all agreed on the fight – DAZN, Golden Boy, Matchroom. We negotiated the fight. We agreed on the terms. We went away, we signed Jaron [to a contract extension] – we got Jaron to sign on those terms. Now, Vergil hasn’t signed. I’m not saying the fight’s signed, but we were told that that fight’s gonna happen. Then you start hearing, ‘Well, why would we fight Boots? He doesn’t have a world title.’ It’s like, ‘What are you talking about? You don’t have a world title.’

“Like, this is just the fight that everybody’s talking about. So, myself and Boots will be flying to Dallas for Vergil Ortiz against Lubin to show our desire to make that fight. And I know that Oscar and Eric, they wanna make great fights. I think they’re up for it as well, so I just hope that Vergil and his team truly want that fight. Because that is, for me, the best fight in the division. If we can’t get that fight – you know, we can’t make Vergil Ortiz fight. But if he doesn’t wanna take the fight, of course, we will target the winner of [Bakhram] Murtazaliev against Josh Kelly, maybe [WBA champ Abass Baraou] ourselves.”

DAZN granted Ennis the tune-up fight he requested to help him get acclimated to the junior middleweight division. He blew out overmatched Uisma Lima on October 11, when Ennis dropped the Angolan contender twice before their scheduled 12-round fight for the WBA interim super welterweight title was stopped just 1:58 after it began.

Ennis went off as a 30-1 favorite to defeat Lima (14-2, 10 KOs) at Xfinity Mobile Arena in his hometown of Philadelphia. DraftKings lists Ortiz, of Grand Prairie, Texas, as an 8-1 favorite over Lubin (27-2, 19 KOs), a southpaw from Orlando, Florida.