Regis Prograis stopped Jose Zepeda in the 11th round last Saturday to win the vacant WBC junior welterweight title. The win, which was his fourth in a row, helped put ‘Rougarou’ fully back on track following his lone pro loss — to Josh Taylor — in 2019.
However, Prograis’ happiness at adding a new belt to his collection has been tamped down somewhat due to an issue he is facing with his purse.
Yesterday the 33-year-old took to Twitter to claim that the $1.2 million check he was given by the fight’s promoter bounced at a Los Angeles area bank.
Kevin Iole at yahoo!sports reports that since then, a banking error has been claimed as being responsible for Prograis not getting paid. Iole also reports that Prograis has now received 50% of his $1,251,082.64 purse and that he scheduled to receive the other 50% today.
MarvNation was the official promoter for Prograis vs. Zepeda; which took place in Los Angeles County, CA. However, that company’s winning $2.4 million bid for the fight was funded by promotion company Legendz. Legendz funded MarvNation in this instance because it does not have a promoter’s license in California.
California State Athletic Commission executive director Andy Foster told Iole that, prior to the fight, Legendz had supplied proof that it had “more than enough” money to cover the fighters’ purses.
Roger Ruiz, a founding partner at Legendz, has claimed that the only reason Prograis did not get his money immediately is because the check was written from a new bank account at a Wells Fargo branch in Downey, CA.
Ruiz said that, because the bank account was recently set up, the bank put a hold on funds when it noticed that large sums of money were being deposited and withdrawn from the account.
“We opened the account, I don’t know, in the last month, and there wasn’t much going on with it and in the last week, there was a lot of activity in and out of the account,” Ruiz said. “They saw so much money all of a sudden in and out of the account that they decided to put a hold on and Regis literally is the only one who didn’t get paid [on time].”
Prograis vs. Zepeda did approximately 20,000 pay-per-view buys on Saturday night. It is believed that the event drew a crowd of 4,302 people at the Dignity Health Sports Park.
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