Valle, a world champion, was moving up in weight to try and win the two light-flyweight belts held by Evelin Nazarena Bemurdez from Argentina. In the corridor an almighty racket broke out as a group of thickly-set men moved at a fast lick, chanting “Yoka! Yoka!” Their battle cry was in honour of Yokasta Valle, the young Costa Rican woman walking to the ring. Prograis removed the diamond stud from his earlobe and, looking up at the television, watched the hushed images of Zepeda being interviewed next door. “She was a beautiful girl,” he said.Īt 7.46pm there was just one bout left before the main event. Navarro’s shirt bore the print of his daughter’s face and said: ‘In Loving Memory of Birdie Navarro.’ The cutman, his face creasing with pain, told me how she had been murdered in Houston 18 months before. Some of their anecdotes stretched back decades and, after the ritual hand-wrapping had been completed, Duran wished Prograis good luck. Prograis, a boxing historian as well as an outstanding contemporary fighter, smiled and listened as his own cutman, Aaron Navarro, and Duran swapped stories of stemming the flow of blood in the heat of battle. Jacob ‘Stitch’ Duran, the 70-year-old Mexican-American in Zepeda’s corner, needed to ensure that Prograis’s hands were wrapped correctly. Evins Tobler, his strength-and-conditioning coach, whooped: “Total domination, baby, total domination.”įifteen minutes later, boxing’s most famous current cutman walked into the room. He always stressed that he had no illusions about the gravity of his profession.Īt 7.15pm, as Conwell and Abreu began the last round, Prograis shadow-boxed in his dressing room. Prograis had also read some of my books which include the tragic deaths of numerous boxers. I couldn’t stop thinking about Day as we watched Conwell on Saturday’s undercard. On the morning of Prograis’ loss to Taylor, on 26 October 2019, they had buried Patrick Day, a fighter who had been beaten into a coma by Conwell’s fists two weeks earlier. Our attention shifted back to the muted television screen where Charles Conwell was caught up in a fierce struggle against Juan Carlos Abreu. He and Prograis had been friends for years and the warmth of his good wishes softened the ominous edge. Nonito Donaire, the great Filipino-American boxer who had won world titles at four different weights from flyweight to featherweight, slipped unobtrusively into the room. If you’re hurt I got to see you fighting back, otherwise I’m stopping it.”

“You could end up in deep water but I will not let you drown,” Corona told Prograis when he gave his pre-fight instructions at 6.40pm. Another reminder of the looming battle arrived in the company of the referee Ray Corona. The sound was turned off but the noise of the crowd outside occasionally erupted when a fighter in the ring was hurt or knocked down. The first hour dragged as we watched the undercard on a television in a corner of the locker room. Zepeda combined raw power with the accuracy of a sharp-shooter. The Mexican-American from Long Beach was also on a winning streak with an impressive 35-2 record. But, all week in LA, Zepeda stressed his determination to become a world champion in his own backyard. When Taylor relinquished the WBC belt four months ago, rather than face a mandatory defence against the hard-hitting Zepeda, Prograis was finally granted another chance. Considered too risky an opponent, he suffered at the hands of promoters and rivals who preferred to avoid offering him another title shot. It had been a world title unification contest and so, for the past three years, Prograis was shut out of his division’s elite contests. His solitary defeat had occurred in October 2019 when, in one of the great fights that year, he was unlucky as the WBA champion to lose a majority decision to Josh Taylor in London. After 28 contests as a pro, Prograis had been victorious in all but one bout. Prograis and his trainer Bobby Benton were the epitome of calm. “It’s like I’ve got a midnight storm moving through my body,” Williams said. Ross Williams, a writer who has been close to Prograis since they were six-year-old boys in New Orleans, gripped my arm when I asked how he was feeling. In his dressing room Prograis spoke to me in a typically relaxed way while, in contrast, his oldest friend shuddered with trepidation.

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