By Dan Ambrose: Regis Prograis says he’s waiting to hear when he’ll fight Mikey Garcia next. The former WBA light welterweight champion Prograis (26-1, 22 KOs) believes he could hear something in the next couple of days to perhaps a week.
Prograis says if he doesn’t fight the former four-division world champion Mikey (40-1, 30 KOs), he’d be open to facing Devin Haney if he wants to move up to 140 to take him on.
Haney’s promoter Eddie Hearn and father Bill Haney have complained about how nobody wants to fight him.
But if Haney is willing to come up to 140, he’ll have the opportunity to fight Prograis. That fight would bring Haney more attention than it would for him to face be of the top 135-lb contenders.
Prograis waiting to hear when Mikey Garcia fight happens
“My manager keeps telling me, ‘Next week’ and ‘the next 48 hours’ and all that stuff,” said Prograis to Fighthype on when he’ll be finding out if and when he’ll be fighting Mikey Garcia.
“I know I’m supposed to be fighting him next, but as far as the date, I don’t know.
“We got to wait for Canelo,” said Prograis. “My schedule is going around his schedule. We don’t want to land at the same time.
“We definitely don’t want to go head to head with Canelo. Me and Mikey are going to be a big fight.
“You want to space them out,” said Prograis about the importance for the promoters to schedule his fight with Mikey not too close to Canelo’s date.
“Yes,” Prograis said when asked if he’d be interested in fighting Devin Haney.
“I want to be a two-time champion [at 140]. Mikey is a big name, maybe Adrien Broner, maybe Gervonta Davis, Devin Haney, and maybe Teofimo,” said Prograis when asked about the fights he wants.
“Those are five names. All of those are big fights, all of those are big names, and all of those are big money fights. So I think I’m going to fight big money fights no matter what,” said Prograis.
Hopefully, the fight with Mikey Garcia takes place for Prograis because he’s been talking about that match-up for a long time.
As such, it would be a shame if the fight doesn’t happen, particularly given the two-year gap between Prograis’ last quality opponent.
Prograis on why he hasn’t become a star
“I didn’t have promotion behind me,” said Prograis on why he hasn’t become a superstar yet. “I never really had that name behind me.
“A lot of people like Adrien Broner and Gervonta Davis, they had co-signed. I never had that. I really grinded from the bottom and had all these things.
“I did it all myself. Adrien Broner told me. We only fight three times a year, and that’s when your promoter is going to promote you
“So your job as a fighter is to promote yourself year-round. So now that’s kind of what I’m doing myself. Invest in yourself. Don’t wait for a promoter to promote you. I never had that big co-sign.
“I’m high-risk, low reward,” said Prograis on why his career didn’t take off after his loss to Josh Taylor. “People don’t want to fight me. And people know that when they fight me, they’re in for a fight.
“I’ll fight Broner first,” Prograis said when asked who he would fight first between Broner and Gervonta ‘Tank’ Davis. “Broner is a clown. He’s not about to fight me,” said Prograis.
There’s no mystery why Prograis hasn’t become a star since his loss to Taylor in 2019, and it starts with his inactivity.
Since that loss to Taylor, Prograis has fought only TWO times in the last two years.
When you’re coming off a loss, it’s impossible to become a star when you fight only once a year, and you’re opposition substandard.
Even if Prograis had a great promoter like Eddie Hearn, he still wouldn’t be a star because he’s only fighting once a year, and his opposition has been terribly poor.
Prograis’ last two fights since his loss to Taylor in 2019:
- Juan Heraldez
- Ivan Redkach
Those guys aren’t good enough for Prograis’ career to have been advanced to superstar status. For Prograis to be a star now, he would have needed to fought six times since his loss to Taylor against these fighters:
- Jose Ramirez
- Josh Taylor –
- Jose Zepeda
- Viktor Postol
- Devin Haney
- Gervonta Davis
Regis talks about mistakes made against Taylor
“I started too late,” said Prograis when asked what he did wrong in his loss to Josh Taylor. “I started good, and I was boxing him.
“But honestly, he got into my head. He really got into my head. I don’t know if you saw the press conference.
“He called me a ‘wanker,’ and I was ‘What?’ I didn’t even hear, and then everybody started laughing. ‘What are you talking about?’ We were taking pictures, and he touched my belts.
“I had my belts on my shoulders, and he touched them. He was like, ‘This is going to be mine.’ That really. You don’t touch me, and it kind of threw me off.
“But he was doing it in kind of a laughing-friendly way. That really threw me off, and I wanted to hurt him.
“At that time, I just wanted to hurt him. That just threw me off my game a lot. That was Thursday when he did that. If y’all saw the weigh-in, we were going back and forth.
“We were talking. At weigh-ins, I don’t talk with nobody. When we were at the fight, and the ref was reading the instructions, I was looking him right in the eye. I’m letting him know, ‘This is serious. I’m about to hurt you,'” said Prograis.
It’s easy to see where Prograis went wrong in the fight. He thought he could be Taylor at his own game by brawling in close, and he wasn’t equipped for that kind of a fight.
With the contest taking place in London, England, Prograis wasn’t going to win close rounds, and there were a number of them.
In a nutshell, Prograis was too slow in adapting to what Taylor was doing, and he let the fight get away from him.
Regis wasn’t focused on Taylor fight
“Usually, I’m focused, and I’m looking down,” Prograis continued. “In boxing, you have to be super focused all the time. You got to be calm, and you got to be focused.
“A mad fighter never wins, and I was a mad fighter that night. I wanted to hurt Josh Taylor. So I think it threw me off.
“Going into the ninth round, my trainer said, ‘What are you doing? Snap out of it.’ So that’s when I started picking up. I just woke up a little late.
“I still thought I won, but it was a close fight. I still thought I won. He missed a lot of shots,” said Prograis.
“Around the eighth or ninth round, he threw a hard jab and stepped with it. I slipped it, and it went right there, and the crowd went crazy. That’s when I knew. ‘Damn, I might [lose].’ They’re thinking that he hit me.
“After first, I’m not going to lie; it messed me up. So I didn’t even watch the [replay of the] fight for a long time. I watched the fight, and I was like, ‘He missed a lot of punches.’
“A lot of punches caught me on the gloves. He missed a lot of punches, and the judges were probably scoring that. In the fight, I knew that.
“It was hard for him to hit me. He was hitting me, but he was missing a lot of punches. I think me and him will have a rematch at 147.
“I want to be another world champion at 140. So whoever it is, that’s what I’ll do,” said Prograis.
Prograis lost the fight with Taylor because he decided to fight him inside for the first eight rounds.
Taylor was the far better inside fighter than Prograis, and he could control the fight in rounds that weren’t close.
In the championship rounds, Prograis finally made the necessary adjustment to take the fight to the outside. He got the better of Taylor with superior hand speed and accurate shots.
