Josh Taylor is the man at 140

Love both equally, two of my favorite fighters. One thing I love and hate about Taylor is his absolute determination to close the distance nd fight every fight on the inside, where he tosses his height advantage out the window and actually can leave him vulnerable to catching a loaded shot with a lot of leverage behind/under it. But he is a very god inside fighter, and if he can keep the fight in close against Prograis, I see him pulling off a close UD. I think that would smother Rougarou's vaunted and 100% legit one hitter quitter power.

All comes down to who can make the fight happen at their preferred range. As highly as I rate Regis, I don't think he's quite as good as Taylor in this aspect, but we will see. I think both guys are special and future/potential p4p type fighters, so this fight is a real treat. Let's just enjoy it, give both men props after the fact and the respect they both deserve, and wait for their future dust ups with Ramirez and Hooker. What a crackin' division.

 

Agree with everything. Taylor gets outclassed by Crawford but Prograis is levels below that. I watched Relikh-Troya recently, terrible performance and lowest quality quarter final. Of all Relikh big fights, only first with with Barthelemy does he land 30+% power punches. The Burns, Troya and second Barthelemy fight he falls in to the late 20%’s. Baranchyk is generally in 40-50% power punches landed other than Taylor, Yigit and one other fight. Relikh is bang average.

 

I’m from Scotland, a fan of both fighters, and I’m as unbiased. I couldn’t care what punch stats come up with, Taylor has no chance of winning a long-range boxing match against Prograis unless he improves his jab output. Or to be more specific, ups his jab output with more authoritative jabs, instead of using those prodding, range-finder types that are used as a weapon of comfort to get him inside.

This is actually a very rare style matchup, because Taylor, the taller fighter who, fleet-footedly, hovers around the perimeter and uses the entire ring to survey the landscape, is the guy with next to no chance of outboxing his smaller, more flat-footed opponent. Prograis is the better pure boxer, because everything he does flows off a busy, fast and hard jab.

And being that both are southpaws, Prograis doesn’t need to battle lead hands with Taylor. Against Relikh, Prograis wasn’t anywhere near as busy with his jab as he was against Flannagan. And he pawed with it more, as both lead hands were clashing with Relikh fighting from the orthodox stance. The alignment of Prograis jabbing hand (his right) has that free, unblocked channel when he fights another southpaw. The same applies to Taylor, so we’ll see if this should help him too. Apart from Winston Campos, a fighter whom Taylor blew away easily, early last year, Josh hasn’t faced a southpaw for quite some time.