Mikey Garcia (40-1, 30 KOs) has started negotiations with Regis Prograis for a fight pegged for the fall on DAZN in the U.S. The talks are “advanced,” according to ESPN.
Mikey is taking a big risk by battling Prograis because this is a fight he could lose big time. Prograis can do everything that Errol Spence did in beating Mikey, but where he’s different is he’ll be looking for a knockout.
Spence went easy on Mikey by boxing him from the outside. It’s fair to say that if Spence took the fight to Mikey, he would have knocked him out. Prograis can knock Mikey out and wrecking his dreams once and for all of getting a big money fight against Manny Pacquiao.
Mikey is popular in Texas and Southern California. If the fight with Prograis gets made, you would have to assume that it’ll take place in one of those two places.
While some boxing fans see the Mikey-Prograis fight as a 50-50 fight, you have to favor Prograis because he’s been active with his career.
He’s also a natural 140-pounder and not someone that enjoyed most of his success at 126 like Mikey. Besides being out of the ring for 18 months, Mikey put on a lot of weight during that time.
Some boxing fans believe Mikey lost his hunger for boxing a long time ago, and he’s now just hustling fights, looking for big paydays against guys that he can’t beat.
On paper, Prograis might be too naturally big, too strong, and too active for Mikey.
If it gets made, the fight will be contested at 140 pounds, which means Mikey will need to come down in weight from 147.
ESPN reports talks between former four-division world champion Mikey and former WBA 140-lb champion Prograis (26-1, 22 KOs).
The 33-year-old Mikey hasn’t fought in 1 1/2 years because he’s been too selective about his opposition.
Although Mikey could have fought many times in the last 18 months, he’s had tunnel-vision, focusing exclusively on trying to land a fight with Manny Pacquiao.
That was Mikey’s dream fight, but he failed to get it, and not surprising why. Mikey had no hardware to offer Pacquiao, who instead will be challenging IBF/WBC welterweight champion Errol Spence Jr on August 21.
“I’ve pretty much made my decision to campaign at ’40 for the next matchup,” said Mikey Garcia to ESPN.
“I think it’s a great matchup for a few reasons being that he’s an aggressive fighter, he’s accomplished, former world champion, and he’s also hungry to regain that position and have a big victory,” Mikey said of Prograis.
Mikey vs. Prograis is a fight that could put the winner in a position of getting a huge pay-per-view match against Gervonta ‘Tank’ Davis, who captured the WBA’s regular 140-lb title last Saturday night with an 11th round stoppage victory over Mario Barrios.
Prograis has already made it clear that he wants to fight Tank Davis, but he needs a solid win over a big name like Mikey to increase his chances.
Earlier in Mikey’s career, he accomplished a lot, winning world titles in four weight classes. Unfortunately, most of the division titles that Mikey won were fights against less than the best.
Mikey blew his chance to cement his legacy when he failed to fight Vasily Lomachenko when he was fighting in the same weight class as him at 135. Some boxing fans think Mikey ducked Lomachenko. Who knows?
All we know is that rather than fight Loma, Mikey moved up to 140 and beat the fading former four-division world champion, Adrien Broner, in 2017 and Sergey Lipinets in 2018. Mikey then went up to 147 and was beaten by a lopsided 12 round decision loss in 2019.
Since losing to Errol, Mikey has fought just once, defeating former two-division world champion Jessie Vargas in February 2020 in a fight that was supposed to build his credibility as a contender at 147.
Some boxing fans view that fight as a cherry-pick for Mikey because Vargas’ career was pretty much finished after he lost his WBO 147-lb title to Manny Pacquiao in 2016.
“I want to get back, I want to do big things, I want to be able to challenge for a world title again and be a world champion so I think those are the elements that make it a great matchup,” said Mikey.
Regis lost his WBA 140-lb title to Josh Taylor in a unification fight in the World Series of Boxing in October 2019 in London, England. The fight was close enough for it to go either way, but Taylor was fighting at home in the UK, which may have been the deciding factor in him winning.
Recently, Prograis bounced back from his loss to Taylor, beating Juan Heraldez and Ivan Redkach. Prograis wants a rematch with Taylor, but it doesn’t look like it has much chance of happening.
Taylor is expected to take a couple more fights at 140 against Jack Catterall and Teofimo Lopez before moving up to 147.