Former 140lb titleholder Regis Prograis takes some time to chat with Marcos Villegas of Fight Hub TV to talk about his March 19 fight with Tyrone McKenna, how he came to be his next opponent, and why he learned a valuable lesson from Mikey Garcia so that he doesn’t take this fight lightly. Check out some excerpts of what Prograis had to say below.
Prograis on why he’s facing someone like McKenna
“That’s what they gave me. For me, it’s not my fault, I want to fight whoever...I’ll fight anybody at 140, I don’t care. I’m gonna be a champion again so nothing is standing in my way at 140...If (McKenna’s) the name they gave me, I guess so — it is what it is. I don’t care who I fight.
“The other thing is me and Mikey (Garcia) were supposed to fight. That was supposed to be a big fight. That’s what I was really waiting on, I was waiting on me and Mikey to fight and then he took the tune-up with Sandor Martin and he lost. That kind of messed up a lot of things, but that was a big fight that was supposed to happen and that didn’t happen so I guess the backup plan is McKenna.”
On if he was frustrated by Garcia’s loss to Martin
“What?! I was like ‘Bruh, noooo!’ It just slipped out my hands...I couldn’t believe it. Like, I was blowing up my Twitter, I was just cursing and all kind of stuff because it just messed up so much for me. I talked to Mikey — I’m actually kind of cool with Mikey — so I talked to him and stuff about it and we was in Vegas together, he was sitting right behind me at the Devin Haney fight and so we was talking to him about it like ‘Damn, Mikey. You messed it up for us, bro. Like, we was supposed to have a big fight and you messed it up and he was like — I know what happened. He overlooked him, that’s what happened. You can’t overlook nobody.
“Same thing with me, I’m fighting Tyrone McKenna and he might not be high up on a lot of people’s list but I can’t overlook this dude because a target’s on my back. And this is his biggest fight ever, this is the biggest fight he ever had so he’s gonna do everything — his coaches, his trainers, going to be in training camp killing themself and doing everything the can because, listen, he beats me we just found out this is for the (WBC) eliminator. So the next fight will be for a belt. So if he beats me he can be in line for a world title shot, next, the fight right after that. I can’t go overlooking nobody, I gotta keep doing what I gotta do.”
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