There has been a re-invention of the wheel, of sorts, with boxing bigwigs now in a mode where they realize that it’s not unwise to build up attractions at the grass-roots level.

Now, not everyone has gotten the memo. But Top Rank, especially, is seeing the payoff when they book Terence Crawford in Nebraska, and Oscar Valdez and Jose Ramirez in their Cali regional hotspots.

Top Rank is in Louisiana, doing it again, with Regis Prograis…

..proudly strutting his stuff on his homeland turf Saturday night. The Las Vegas outfit has a fat output deal on ESPN, so they’ve been looking to fill programming hours with fighters signed to other promoters and that is the case with Prograis. New Yorker Lou Dibella handles Prograis, who grew up and considers N.O. home, though he trains now in Texas.

The from-the-ground up promotions are harder work than booking a show at a casino, which hands over a fat check and has a built in audience of fight fans, and gambling peeps who go to comped shows. But, it could be argued, that construct, now decades old within the sweet science arena, hasn’t been serving the sport as a whole. After all, if a fighter grows to a certain stature, but then takes his act on the road, to Las Vegas, that can mean hometown rooters get left in the dust. The true devotees, the most enthusiastic apostles, who would be best at spreading the gospel of their hero and the sport as a whole, see the object of their attraction being swept away, to the big city where the bright lights obscure their vision and dim the attachment with the ones that knew them before they hit the bigs.

You can tell all this week that Prograis is heavily jazzed to be showing off his arsenal in front of family and friends. I reached out to Dibella, who also seems to have extra pep in his step as he talks up the sport on Bourbon St and beyond. Can he share an anecdote which helps convey to readers the mood of the promotion?

“Guy stops me on Bourbon Street,” the Brooklyn born Long Island resident shared with me. “Has like 30 strings of beads around his neck and a GIANT drink. Says, “DiBella, the Rougarou is gonna do his thing.” Then he starts howling like a werewolf and walks away. He was still howling when I jumped into a taxi!”

Total LOL…

Beyond that air of frivolity, what about the stakes of this scrap. What are the stakes for Prograis, the 29 year old with a 21-0 record? He is a heavy-duty favorite in his tango with Argentine Juan Jose Velasco, a 20-0 scrapper promoted by Sampson Lewkowicz who hasn’t faced anyone who is a step or maybe two away from Prograis in talent. “Huge stakes,” Dibella said. “He enters the World Boxing Super Series 2 as a favorite if he wins and can be a millionaire and on pound for pound list in one year!”

My three cents: Bravo for boxing, for understanding that a back to the basics game-plan is best for business. This is truly smart trend in the game and is grounds for optimism for those of us that want the sport to catapult out of the niche-y spot it’s been in for a few decades.

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