That’s all for tonight. Be sure to check out Ramon Antonio Vargas’s full report off tonight’s fight and thanks as always for following along with us.
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“I got the drop early,” Prograis says. “I kept pressing the action, but he ran around the whole time. I definitely have to go back to the gym and work on some things. He ran and he tried to survived. He was stronger than I thought and he caught me with some punches, but he just ran around. It was kind of hard to get to him.
“I have to go work on cutting the ring off and stuff. New Orleans, I’m sorry. I wanted to put on a little better performance. When you come back for hometown fights, they make you so nervous. I was in my hotel room, I was nervous. Usually when I’m fighting on the road and I’m not here, I stay in the hotel the whole time. This time I went out before the fight. Hometown fights, they’re the worst, bro.”
So what’s next? Prograis rolls through a list of the division’s beltholders, but it sounds like a fight with rising undisputed lightweight champion Devin Haney is the most attractive option.
“It depends on Eddie (Hearn),” he says. “There’s a lot of big names out there. They have (Devin) Haney. Teo (Lopez), I don’t know what’s going on with Teo. (Subriel) Matías, he has a belt. I don’t want to fight Rollie (Romero), Rollie’s terrible to me. Ryan Garcia. There’s a lot of big fights out there for me. We’ll see what’s happening next.”
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Prograis defeats Zorrilla by split decision!
Regis Prograis has defended his WBC junior welterweight title by a split decision. Two of the official ringside judges turned in scores of 118-109 and 117-110 for Prograis with the third scoring it 114-113 for Zorrilla.
Round 12
Both guys are letting their hands go a bit in the final frame. Zorrilla darts into the pocket and lands a couple of shots to the body. Prograis, who has struggled in cutting off the ring all night, is making no better progress now. There’s the bell and more boos from the crowd. Waiting on the official scores but on our card, Prograis’s third-round knockdown has made the difference in an otherwise even fight.
Guardian’s unofficial score: Prograis 9-10 Zorrilla (Prograis 114-113 Zorrilla)
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Round 11
Prograis lands a hard left hand that seems to hurt Zorrilla halfway through the round, but Zorrilla returns fire immediately. Nothing else. One of the worst televised title fights in recent memory, but the WBC junior welterweight title does seem to hang in the balance, so worth hanging around if you’ve made it this far.
Guardian’s unofficial score: Prograis 10-9 Zorrilla (Prograis 105-103 Zorrilla)
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Round 10
Prograis has closed the distance a click and picked up his activity over the last few rounds (though the bar to this point has been subterranean). The champion falls to the canvas in the last 30 seconds when the fighters get their front feet tangled but it was a clear slip and ruled so. Another very slow round with little to separate the contestants. You do wonder if the judges will be giving the challenger the benefit of the doubt in the closest frames.
Guardian’s unofficial score: Prograis 10-9 Zorrilla (Prograis 95-94 Zorrilla)
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Round 9
Prograis connects with a sharp left hand upstairs in the first 30 seconds but Zorrilla takes it well. Not a whole happens either way for the rest of the frame. A dreadful fight, really.
Guardian’s unofficial score: Prograis 10-9 Zorrilla (Prograis 85-85 Zorrilla)
Round 8
Zorrilla continues to keep his distance, only he’s throwing more punches. Another quiet round ticks away as Prograis still can’t crack the puzzle before him. The champion is just a bit too leery of Zorrilla’s power to rush pell-mell into the pocket. Prograis tries in the final seconds, but Zorrilla manages to catch him on the way in with a right that briefly wobbles the champion.
Guardian’s unofficial score: Prograis 9-10 Zorrilla (Prograis 75-76 Zorrilla)
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Round 7
Prograis is inching ever so closer into the pocket in this round, looking for a target for his powerful left hand, but he can’t find the opportunity to let it fly. Instead the fighters circle one another for most of another quiet three minutes. The biggest shot of the round from either fighter comes near the end, when Prograis ducks under Zorrilla’s guard and lands a thudding left to the body.
Guardian’s unofficial score: Prograis 10-9 Zorrilla (Prograis 66-66 Zorrilla)
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Round 6
Another quiet round. Zorrilla was just busy enough, especially in the final half-minute. The inaction draws lusty boos from the crowd during the final minute of the frame. After the bell Prograis’s corner warns him that Zorrilla is trying to control the pace before stealing the round with bursts of action at the end. And they’re exactly right!
Guardian’s unofficial score: Prograis 10-9 Zorrilla (Prograis 56-57 Zorrilla)
Round 5
A fairly even round fought at Zorrilla’s pace with no punches of significance until the final moments when the challenger closed strong with a flurry, landing a crisp left hook over the top. Just enough for the challenger to shade it on my card.
Guardian’s unofficial score: Prograis 9-10 Zorrilla (Prograis 47-47 Zorrilla)
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Round 4
A slower-paced session all around but Prograis was clearly busier as Zorrilla hasn’t been nearly as active since the knockdown early in the third as before it.
Guardian’s unofficial score: Prograis 10-9 Zorrilla (Prograis 38-37 Zorrilla)
Zorrilla down in round three!
Round 3
And Prograis dumps Zorrilla to the canvas with a heat-seeking left hand to the nose roughly one minute into the round! Zorrilla beats the count at eight but he might be in trouble! Prograis lunges in to finish things along the ropes, but Zorrilla looks to have gotten through the worst of it.
Guardian’s unofficial score: Prograis 10-8 Zorrilla (Prograis 28-28 Zorrilla)
Round 2
Prograis caught a break in the first. That was a clear knockdown and the referee just missed it. The second unfolds at an even slower pace than the opener, but Zorrilla boxing from the outside with confidence, throwing and landing just a little bit more. A good start for the heavy underdog.
Guardian’s unofficial score: Prograis 9-10 Zorrilla (Prograis 18-20 Zorrilla)
Round 1
The fighters meet at the center of the ring and begin pawing at each other with jabs: Prograis from a southbox stance, Zorrilla orthodox. Neither fighter is doing too much through the halfway mark of the first round. Prograis is throwing more punches while Zorrilla looks to be timing him for a right-hand counter. Zorrilla lands a crisp straight right hand. Then with about 20 seconds left, Prograis gets hit with a big left hand upstairs and nearly goes down! He’s able to stay upright by grabbing hold of his opponent around his trunks, then lands a nice right hand over the top after pulling himself upright before the bell. A replay between rounds confirms it should have been ruled a knockdown. Officially, though, it wasn’t.
Guardian’s unofficial score: Prograis 9-10 Zorrilla (Prograis 9-10 Zorrilla)
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The anthems have been played. The fighters have both made their entrances. The referee has given the final instructions. The seconds are out. And we’ll pick it up with round-by-round coverage from here!
Shakhram Giyasov has just won a 12-round unanimous decision over Harold Calderon in the co-feature bout. The judges’ scorecards were 120-108, 118-110 and 116-112. The fight was a eliminator for Errol Spence’s WBA welterweight title, which is one of four belts on the line in next month’s summit meeting between Spence and Crawford.
Next up: Regis Prograis v Danielito Zorrilla.
Ramla Ali knocked out for first career defeat
Ramla Ali, a refugee from Somalia who began her boxing career in the UK, suffered the first defeat of her professional career in stunning fashion on Saturday night’s undercard when Mexico’s Julissa Alejandra Guzman knocked her out with a thunderous left counter at the 42-second mark of the eighth round in their junior featherweight bout.
A HUGE knockout by Guzman hands Ramla Ali the first defeat of her career 🤯#AliGuzman #PrograisZorrilla pic.twitter.com/V93itMwU1T
— Matchroom Boxing (@MatchroomBoxing) June 18, 2023
Gonzalez twice floored Ali – a former Olympian, well-known fashion model and human-rights activist whose story is an inspirational one – in the fight to deny her a chance to fight Yamileth Mercado for her WBC belt at 122lbs. Ali, who went off as an overwhelming minus-1800 favorite with the oddsmakers in Saturday’s fight, falls to 8-1 (2 KOs) overall, while Guzman improves to 13-2-2 (7 KOs).
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Preamble
Hello and welcome to New Orleans for tonight’s fight between Regis Prograis and Danielito Zorrilla. Our Ramon Antonio Vargas is ringside at the Smoothie King Center for tonight’s much-ballyhooed return of big-time boxing to the Big Easy ... and we’ll throw it over to him right now for details from a shocking upset on the undercard.
Bryan will be there shortly. In the meantime here’s Ramon Antonio Vargas’s lookahead to tonight’s main event.
