THE SIXTH SENSE

EVERY time I interview Regis Prograis we go somewhere new. It is like catching a train to some unknown destination that emerges, from out of the mist, as a place of mystery and surprise after we have followed a curved track around a mountain or rattled past the steamy swamplands of Louisiana. Today is no different. After we remember the death last month of his favourite fighter, Marvin Hagler, Prograis talks about the visions he sometimes sees either awake or in his sleep. They can be serene or terrifying figures, or simply the face of a murdered friend who wants to pass on a message to the fighter at night.

We talk about death, and how Prograis feels no fear but just acceptance that he will leave this world when his time is up, and about so much happiness and hope. It is no ordinary boxing interview even though, this Saturday night in Atlanta, Prograis will be back in the ring against Ivan Redkach as he becomes the second major American fighter, after Teofimo Lopez, to be promoted by the ambitious new outfit Tydriller which hopes to change the US boxing landscape.

Prograis has lost only one fight, an agonisingly narrow defeat to Josh Taylor in the final of the World Boxing Super Series super-lightweight final in London in one of 2019’s great contests. He has won all his other 25 bouts and he remains in the top three of the world in the 140 pound division. Taylor, the IBF and WBA champion, and José Ramírez, the WBC and WBO title-holder, meet in a unification contest on 22 May in Las Vegas – with Prograis hopeful he will eventually fight the winner. But, as has happened so often in his career, this most accomplished and fascinating