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Chorley super-lightweight Jack Catterall is targeting a second shot at a world title next year, providing he’s able to overcome former champion Regis Prograis on Saturday evening.
The pair meet in the first boxing event held at Manchester’s new Co-Op Arena at the weekend.
Manchester super-featherweight Michael Gomez Jr also challenges British and Commonwealth champion Reece Bellotti, while Campbell Hatton looks to overturn his professional loss in a rematch with James Flint at 140lbs.
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Catterall and Prograis meet in crossroads fight
Catterall’s only shot at world honours came in February 2022, when he was controversially outpointed by then undisputed champion Josh Taylor via split-decision.
The Englishman was forced to wait over two years for a second shot at Taylor who, by that point, had either vacated or lost the world titles he once held.
Nevertheless, Catterall was undeterred and outpointed his Scottish counterpart to earn a unanimous decision victory in Leeds back in May.
The win leaves the 31-year-old in a strong position to challenge for a world title next year but Catterall insists he wasn’t willing to wait around due to struggles he’d already endured with inactivity earlier in his career.
Speaking at the fight week press conference, he said: “You [promoter Eddie Hearn] said we could get a world title shot in 2025 but I’ve been in that position before where I’m waiting on something that might not happen.
“So, my instructions to Sam [Jones, manager] and to Matchroom was ‘I wanna fight the best’ and Regis was the name that was proposed, so we jumped at it.”
Meanwhile, Prograis finds himself clinging onto fighting at the top level after uninspiring performances in his two most recent fights.
He had initially became a two-time world champion with an 11th-round stoppage of Jose Zepeda back in November 2022 but failed to convince with a split-decision victory over Danielito Zorilla in his first defence.
The American was then handed the second defeat of his career after he was dominated over 12 rounds by fellow countryman Devin Haney in December last year.
The latter was awarded all 12 rounds on the judges’ scorecards in a fight which also saw him dropped to the canvas in the third round.
Prograis has not fought since but is adamant he has enough to revive his career with victory in Manchester.
He said: “This is the fight I wanted. Me and Jack were supposed to fight a long time ago.
“I feel like they didn’t want to fight. This is the best fight you can make at 140 without the belts and right now I’m feeling super confident about everything.
“There’s different levels to this game. Me and him, we’ve got similar opponents but if you take Josh Taylor off his resume, he has nothing. There’s levels to this game.”
Main event ring-walks are expected at around 10:30pm UK time, live on DAZN.
Fancy some betting action ahead of a huge night of boxing in Manchester? Check out Odds Now’s 5/1 bet-builder for Catterall-Prograis here.
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