Golden Boy reportedly contact Regis Prograis about facing Ryan Garcia with Gervonta Davis fight in jeopardy

With the Gervonta Davis vs Ryan Garcia fight seemingly in genuine danger of not happening due to issues on the Golden Boy and Garcia side with Davis’ rematch clause, Mike Coppinger of ESPN.com now reports that Golden Boy have “reached out” to Regis Prograis and his team about possibly fighting Garcia on the April 15 date.

Prograis, who holds the WBC title at 140 lbs, has had some back-and-forth of his own with Garcia in recent months on social media, and we’ve talked about that “planting the seed” for a future fight. There may simply be a bloom a lot sooner than most expected.

The 34-year-old Prograis (28-1, 24 KO) would also arguably be a harder fight for Garcia (23-0, 19 KO) than even Davis (28-0, 26 KO) is. Davis is a step up for Garcia, but Ryan has significant size on Davis, even fighting at a 136 lb catchweight, which was the intention. Prograis almost surely can’t do anything less than a full 140, which is where Garcia has intended to campaign, and is just a bigger dude than “Tank” either way.

Stylistically, it’s at least as difficult, but it would also be a fight that makes some sense. Garcia has been training for a southpaw, obviously, and Prograis is a southpaw, so they at least would not have to make that major switch in considerations with the preparation.

This is all kind of a huge mess, which really isn’t a surprise to anyone, particularly those who have understandably never really believed that Davis vs Garcia was actually going to happen in the first place. What may be a surprise to a lot of those same people would be Prograis getting the call to replace Davis — that gives the Golden Boy/Garcia side a huge sense of, “We’re not the reason the Davis fight didn’t happen,” because they’d still be stepping Ryan up in a major risk — again, arguably an even bigger in-ring risk, and for a fight that is not nearly the guaranteed blockbuster smash that Davis vs Garcia is.