WBC Super-Lightweight Champion, Regis Prograis, has been campaigning in the 140lbs division for over a decade now, with two separate reigns as a title holder and just one professional defeat to his name.
Now, ahead of the arguably toughest fight of his career, he has revealed what he does outside of the ropes.
‘Rougarou’ will take on former undisputed lightweight champion Devin Haney in December, who is jumping up in weight with the ambition of becoming a two-weight world champion at just 24-years-old.
The 34-year-old southpaw will have put in the hard yards if he is to pull off the upset, showing some ‘shelf control’ to focus on training rather than his book collection, which he told Cigar Talk all about.
“I hated school, never liked school at all, but I do like to learn. I started when I was like nineteen/twenty and if I am not mistaken, I read about an athlete, I don’t know who it was, an Olympic athlete or something like that.
They said that what they did was, before all the days of social media, they watched a lot of TV, and so what they did was replace that with reading. I just did the same thing, literally I might only read a few hours a day now, but when I first started I was doing five or six hours a day, just hitting them books.”
“I don’t put a book on my bookshelf unless I read it. If I didn’t read it yet, I would put it on my office desk or something like that, but on my bookshelf, if I show people like all the books that I read, you can open it up and see my name and you’ll see highlighted stuff and notes in there, I just like to learn information.”
The New-Orleans native who sharpened his tools in Houston has been open about his tough journey into boxing – one that began with Hurricane Katrina tearing apart his city.
Prograis-Haney takes place on December 9 in San Francisco. Fans will be able to watch globally on DAZN as the Louisiana super-lightweight swaps print for the canvas – and he’ll be studying his opponent plenty beforehand.