By Barry Holbrook: Regis Prograis is predicting a win for IBF welterweight champion Errol Spence Jr. (25-0, 21 KOs) in his unification fight against WBC champion Shawn Porter (30-2-1, 17 KOs) at the end of the month on September 28 at the Staples Center in Los Angeles, California. Prograis believes there’s no one at 147 that can beat him, including Terence Crawford.
WBA light welterweight champion Prograis (24-0, 20 KOs) has a pretty good idealof the limitations that Porter and Crawford both have in the size department. Both are excellent fighters, but small for the welterweight division. Spence is considered by many as a junior middleweight, who boils down to fight at 147. Crawford has only had three fights at 147 since moving up to the division last year. His wins have come against limited fighters in Amir Khan, Jeff Horn and Jose Benavidez.
Spence and Porter will be meeting up in an important fight on Fox Sports pay-per-view. The winner of the match could wind up facing WBA welterweight champion Manny Pacquiao or WBO belt holder Crawford.
Spence wants to fight the 40-year-old Pacquiao next, but it’s unclear whether that match will happen. Pacquiao hasn’t made up his mind whether he’ll take the fight with the Spence-Porter winner. It’s more likely that not that Pacquiao will shy away from fighting the winner if it’s Spence.
Spence with too much size for Porter and Crawford says Prograis
“At welterweight, I can’t see nobody beating Spence,” said Prograis to Fighthype. “The only person I can see maybe giving him some kind of trouble, and I could be wrong, is Terence Crawford, but I still think he [Spence] would beat him too, because of his size. I think Crawford’s skill is better, but as far as size-wise, and punching power, I would always give it to Spence. As far as Spence and Porter, I think it’ll be a real good fight, and it’ll be here too,” said Prograis.
Porter’s aggressive style of fighting is made to order for Spence. He likes when his opponents come directly at him looking to slug it out. In the sparring that Porter is doing against super middleweight David Benavidez, he’s planing to slug. That’s not going to work too well for Porter when he gets inside the ring with Spence.
The 5’7″ Porter is in a tough position in facing Spence, because he’s not going to out-box him. Porter arguably should have lost his last fight against Yordenis Ugas last March in Carson, California. Shawn went away from his normal brawling style against Ugas, and tried to box him, and ended up getting worked over. The judges gave Porter a 12 round split decision win, but it highly controversial. The only score that made sense of the three judges was the 117-111 score for Ugas. The fact Porter can’t even beat Ugas indicates that he’s going to be way out of his class against Spence. Other than the obligatory roughhouse tactics that we’ll likely see from Porter, he could wind up getting dominated.
Nope no reply to that. No more twitter fingers for me. Only working https://t.co/quVfIPTc7L
— Rougarou (@RPrograis) September 3, 2019
Regis Prograis faces Josh Taylor on Oct.26
Prograis is facing IBF light welterweight champion Josh Taylor (15-0, 12 KOs) next month on October 26 in the final of the World Boxing Super Series tourney at the O2 Arena in London. The fight will be shown on DAZN and Sky Sports. This is going to be an interesting match between two big punchers. Prograis is more of a slugger than Taylor, but he’s going to need to show some skills to win.
Taylor will have home advantage against Prograis, and the crowd will be heavily in his favor. This is going to be a new experience for Prograis, who has fought most of his career at home in New Orleans. This is a tough opponent for Prograis to be fighting for his first away fight of his career, and he may crack under the pressure.