Promoter Eddie Hearn has announced that Jack Catterall will fight former two-time light welterweight champion Regis Prograis in a 12-round contest on August 24th at the Co-Op Live Arena in Manchester, England.
The 35-year-old Prograis (29-2, 24 KOs) is fighting for the first time since being dethroned of his WBC 140-lb title by a hulking Devin Haney last December in San Francisco.
It’s not a good match-up for the shopworn Prograis because Catterall’s fighting style is similar to Haney and Shakur Stevenson, involving a lot of clinching, jabbing, potshots, and moving around. Fans believe that Prograis washed, and he’s being sacrificed to make Catterall look better than he is.
Catterall uses a three-step pull-back move that is a perfect copy of Shakur’s and just as boring to watch. Hopefully, for the fans’ sake, Catterall abandons his Shakur style and comes to fight because he won’t increase his popularity unless he makes it more entertaining for the fans.
This is not the fight that Catterall and his fans were hoping he’d get, as he wanted to battle Arnold Barboza Jr. in a WBO title eliminator.
It’s not surprising that the fight isn’t happening because Barboza Jr. is already rated at the top of the WBO’s rankings at 140, and he doesn’t need to fight the highly defensive Catterall to earn a title shot.
Catterall (29-1, 13 KOs) recently defeated Josh Taylor by a 12-round unanimous decision last May in Leeds, England.
At the end of the contest, Taylor’s promoter, Bob Arum, entered the ring and went on a major rant, complaining about the judges’ scores and saying his fighters wouldn’t be coming to the UK again.
Hearn promotes Catterall and Prograis, so he doesn’t have to worry about an outside promoter having a royal fit when the scores are announced. It’s expected to be a mismatch in Catterall’s favor, so there shouldn’t be any controversy afterward.
Prograis has looked horrible in his last two fights against Haney and Danielito Zorrilla. He looks nothing like the fighter who knocked out Jose Zepeda in 2022, but it’s unclear whether that’s age or his being matched against guys who were too good for him.
Haney looked like a super middleweight inside the ring with Prograis last December, so why he lost to him is understandable. But against Zorrilla, a fighter that had done nothing in his career, it was a shock that Prograis struggled so badly against him.
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