The WBA super-lightweight champion says the disaster ‘took away everything’ but forced him to grow up, and explains why he will treat himself to a new bookshelf if he beats Josh Taylor

“If I didn’t read as much as I did, and study the history, I’d probably be intimidated by this fight and by Josh Taylor,” Regis Prograis says as he faces the dangerous ordeal that awaits him and his opponent on Saturday night. Prograis and Taylor are both unbeaten world champions in the super-lightweight division and their unification contest at the O 2 Arena should be riveting.

I interviewed both men last week and they offer an intriguing study in contrast. Taylor, a 28-year-old Scot who lives just outside Edinburgh, is likable yet concentrated in his searing focus on Prograis, while also revealing a passion for motorbike racing. The 30-year-old Prograis, meanwhile, is erudite and laconic. He discusses books and history, poverty and morality. In London he has visited the Churchill War Rooms and plans were made for him to meet the historian Andrew Roberts. An unlikely encounter between a heavily tattooed American boxer and Churchill’s biographer didn’t happen this time but it’s an example of Prograis’s difference to most fighters.

Josh Taylor: ‘I was always smaller than everyone … I would fight them straight away’ Read more

Prograis and I have emailed each other regularly over the past few months and I have been sending him a stream of books which he has read and written about in interesting ways. His desire to read, and to one day write a book himself, is at the heart of our exchange. Prograis also highlights his voracious appetite for reading as one of the reasons why he will handle the unsettling intensity of this fight.

“I love reading about the psychology and history of boxing,” Prograis says. “Having read so much about intimidation it seems to me that Taylor is more intimidated than I am. If you look at his body language, you can see it. He’s very intense. I’m so cool. I’m collected. You can’t bother me. When I told him: ‘You try to look at me all mean, but that don’t matter,’ I think it bothered him. He is used to being an intimidator at this weight [140lb] because he’s so tall and with a long reach. I can see how he could intimidate some people. But I come to him with a lot of knowledge, a lot of skill and a lot of power.”

Prograis looks strong but he smiles when I mention the size difference between him and Taylor. “I always fought bigger people. It comes easy to me. I told Taylor straight: ‘Even if you have all those advantages, you still can’t beat me. You can be stronger, you can be faster, you can hit harder, you’re obviously taller and you got the longer reach. That doesn’t matter. None of that stuff wins the fight.’ It comes down to skill and will. He is talking much more angrily that I am. I think that was because, when the fight got postponed while I sorted out my contract, he was convinced I was scared of him. That was never was the case. It was about the money.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Regis Prograis takes on Josh Taylor at the O2 on Saturday evening. Photograph: Andrew Couldridge/Action Images via Reuters

“Now he might be a little worried because I’ve been here three weeks. I came over early to be well-adjusted to the weather, the people, the food, the time difference, everything. He sees now I am really serious. It’s not a game. I am ready and I am not scared of him one bit. It’s understandable that he should be more worried than me.”

Prograis, who is from New Orleans, talks in a relaxed drawl which hides the menace of a fighter who has knocked out 80% of his opponents. Does he feel any animosity towards Taylor, who has spoken of how Prograis will “get chinned in a dog fight”? He shakes his head: “No.”

Does it help a fighter if he is driven by resentment or dislike of his rival? “Not for me. I always fight calm. You want to hurt the opponent, of course, but I never think of damaging him. So I don’t have to be mad at them. For me, fighting is just something I love to do.”

Fourteen years ago, in August 2005, Prograis’s life changed for ever when his family home and much of New Orleans was devastated by Hurricane Katrina. His family lost everything and he had to start a new life in Houston – where boxing became his salvation. “Everyone wants me to say Katrina was hard,” Prograis suggests. “I was 16 so it definitely forced me to grow up early. Looking back, it was the best thing that ever happened to me. It’s hard for me to look at it as a bad thing because so much good came out of it. It changed my life for the better.

“But, at the time, it was a shock. It was like: ‘You were here in New Orleans, your life was like this and that’s it. That life is gone for ever. Wiped away.’ You can type in your zip code and see your area. We did it because we were seeing all the hurricane stuff on the news. We were seeing water drowning the city. But we didn’t know if our exact location was full of water. So we typed in the zip code and our house was like a lake. Our whole neighbourhood was under water. Where I lived in New Orleans was right next to a lake and you couldn’t tell the difference. I knew we’re never going back there again.

“For me and my sister it was fun because we were out of school. It was like vacation. We were used to hurricane season every year and the warnings to evacuate. You got to put tape on your windows, fill your gas tanks up, get water. Then nothing happens. You might get a tree knocked over. That happened a few times over the years but this was different. The mayor was on the news and he said: ‘It’s gonna be like Hurricane Betsy.’ When Hurricane Betsy happened [in 1965] my grandma remembers her and her daddy getting around in boats. She said: ‘If it’s going to be like that, we gotta go.’ That’s why we left the day before Katrina.”

His New Orleans roots still run deep. “It’s home,” Prograis says simply. “Where I come from, the people around you determine your success. Of course we all want money. When I was young I always looked at rich people and thought: ‘I wanna have those things.’ Katrina took away everything we had, and we did not have much, but as I get older I realise it’s the people that matter. It’s the relationships you have, the love you have.

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“I once looked at my grandparents as being unsuccessful. They had nothing. They were always real poor. She was a maid for 25 years. When we used to leave for school we would drop her off – at the house she used to clean. My grandpa worked two jobs for 40 years. He was a janitor and he worked on the garbage truck. At first you think those are not good careers. But if you look at my grandma and grandpa, they succeeded in life because everybody loves them. My grandma calls everybody every day. She talks to everybody. That’s just how she is. I’m a fighter but I try to be like that because it’s the right way.”

Prograis had started boxing in New Orleans a few months before Katrina but when his family moved to Houston he embraced this dark old trade. Boxing and books soon became the cornerstones of his new life. “Because I started boxing late I was at a disadvantage. I had to catch up. And, for me, catching up was reading and studying. Everybody works hard in the gym. But you got to think about what’s outside the gym. When you done training, what’s going to be the difference? For me, it’s your mind.

“I learned that Mike Tyson was a student of the game. I thought: ‘I wanna do that.’ So I just watched thousands of fights. Almost all the greatest fighters you can name, I watched all their fights from their pro debut to their last bout. I also started reading. I read about someone who was trying to go to the Olympics and they substituted TV for books. At one time I was probably watching five hours of TV a day. I was like: ‘Damn, imagine if I read that much. Imagine how much I will know.’ I started doing that. Of course I don’t read as much as I used to because I got two kids and I’m busy now. But when I first started, I was reading six, seven hours a day. Read, read, read. I would lose myself in books. Now I got a shit-load of books.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Regis Prograis and Josh Taylor square up at the Weigh-In. Photograph: Philip Sharkey/TGS Photo/Shutterstock

Prograis messages me a few hours later to say that he went straight to a bookshop after our interview. He picked up a new book which goes well with the two I give him when we meet again on his last day of sparring.

“The kids and my wife are only coming to London just before the fight, so I have got so much reading time right now,” he says. “That has to be a good thing.”

Vicious and hurtful punches, rather than books, will occupy his mind on Saturday night. But as he tries to emulate his boxing heroes who fought all over the world – from Muhammad Ali and Sugar Ray Robinson to Roberto Duran and Tyson – Prograis will draw deep on all the words he has read about courage and desire. There will be times when it will feel as if a storm has engulfed the ring. But Prograis survived Katrina and discovered boxing.

“I’ve learned a lot over the years,” he says. “I know this is a big night that could make my life even better. I’m ready.” Prograis looks up and smiles. “And, after I win, I can go out and get a much bigger bookshelf.”