By James Hicken
REGIS Prograis has been at the top table of boxing for some time now and was always considered a prospect throughout his amateur and early professional career. He has lived up to those expectations and had a career lined with gold. Now, as his career begins its end, to use a cliché oxymoron, he hopes for one last roll of the dice on the table he has been sitting at for the last six years.
With an amateur record of 87-7, being ranked number four in the United States, the 2009 Ringside world champion and multiple-time regional golden gloves champion, it is hard to argue for anything other than a stellar amateur background for Regis Prograis.
He decided to turn professional in 2012 after competing in the US Olympic trials and making his debut the same year against a similarly fresh-faced Carl Almirol, whom he dismantled inside one round.
In the next three years, Prograis fought 15 times, winning 13 of those fights by knockout. This put him firmly in many people’s conversations about future world title contenders and even earned him ESPN’s 2015 Prospect of the Year award.
2016 rolled around and Prograis picked up his first regional belt, winning the vacant North American Boxing Federation super-lightweight title, stopping Luis Eduardo Florez, who did not provide staunch opposition for ‘Rougarou’.
With his name rightly now on the world stage, the opposition for Prograis naturally took a step up and after two definitive knockout wins within two rounds in 2017, the New Orleans native took on his fiercest challenge yet in Julius Indongo for the WBC interim super-lightweight belt.
Indongo was the former unified super-lightweight champion and had only been defeated once until this point when he challenged for undisputed supremacy against current pound-for-pound great Terence Crawford (below).
Mikey Williams/Top Rank
This fight would put the division on notice as he knocked out Indongo in the second round. He showed bad intentions from the first bell, stalking the much taller, awkward Namibian, using his elusive head movement to drop him in the first round with a counter jab and finish the fight the very next round with viscously powerful overhands.
This commanding performance from Prograis lined him up for much bigger opportunities heading into the rest of 2018. It was hard to miss that he had just dealt with Indongo more decisively than the current undisputed champion.
This big opportunity would come before the year was out as the second season of the World Boxing Super Series was announced with the addition of the super-lightweight division. Prograis would not pass up such a massive chance at world titles and to lift the World Boxing Super Series trophy.
Symptomatic of his intentions for this tournament, Prograis, as the top seed, was afforded his choice of opponent, and he chose Terry Flanagan, a former WBO champion coming off his only career defeat.
Flanagan did not have enough in his arsenal to beat the high-flying American as he was dropped in the eighth round and beaten by a resounding margin on all three judges’ cards to progress Prograis through to the semi-final to face the WBA champion Kiryl Relikh.
Time after time, Prograis had proved the hype about him was real, and it was now time for him to prove it on the biggest stage of his career, with a world title on the line in the semi-finals of the World Boxing Super Series.
The performance ‘Rougarou’ put on was more than worthy of the world title he received and could only be described as a thrashing of Relikh, stopping him exactly halfway through the fight to book himself into the final and to face another rising star in Josh Taylor for the trophy and to unify the division with Taylor’s IBF title.
Things did not play out as Prograis imagined in the final, as he lost a majority decision in a competitive fight with Josh Taylor. After such a busy 2018 and 2019, Prograis took a year out and likely planned his roadmap to become a world champion again.
Action Images/Reuters/Andrew Couldridge
His activity level did diminish, fighting only once a year from 2020 to 2022, but he put together three knockout wins, placing himself at the top of the WBC rankings to end a short rebuild and be ready to once again wear a version of the crown at 140 lbs.
On November 26, 2022, Prograis would take his seat on the green and gold throne, winning the vacant WBC super-lightweight title against Jose Zepeda in the dominating fashion we had become accustomed to.
Zepeda was cut early in the fight, but Prograis was a patient and calculated fighter, so he toiled away and eventually brutally dropped Zepeda in the 11th round. The referee didn’t need to finish his count to know that Zepeda could not continue.
The reign of Prograis had begun and he took no time in solidifying his position as a bona fide champion, beating Daneilito Zorrilla in a strange split decision victory that saw two judges score the fight 118-109 and 117-110, but Craig Metcalfe had seemingly been watching a different fight to his colleagues and scored in 114-113 to Zorrilla.
As any real champion would, Prograis saw his chance at greatness. They took it as the recently vacated, undisputed, undefeated lightweight champion Devin Haney had decided to make a weight class foray to challenge the WBC belt.
It was a chance for Prograis to become a king slayer and extinguish the bright star of Devin Haney, who had been touted by many to become one of the greatest of all time. It would prove to be a bridge too far, and he lost a lopsided decision because he could not get past Haney’s long jab and educated defences.
34 years old at the time, many thought this might be the last time we see Prograis at this level, having been beaten so convincingly. But such is his champion’s heart, he is willing to put his career on the line against another young star in the making for one more chance at world championship glory in one of the most competitive divisions in the world.
