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Regis Prograis set to receive full $1.2 million payment after fight check bounced

WBC super lightweight champion Regis Prograis (left), will eventually get his entire fight check for defeating Jose Zepeda on Saturday in Carson, California. His check was initially denied by the bank. (Photo by Tayfun Coskun/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images)
WBC super lightweight champion Regis Prograis (left), will eventually get his entire fight check for defeating Jose Zepeda on Saturday in Carson, California. His check was initially denied by the bank. (Photo by Tayfun Coskun/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images)

Regis Prograis, the newly crowned WBC super lightweight world champion, received 50% of his fight purse on Wednesday and will receive the other 50% on Thursday after his initial check bounced at the bank. The money was due from his fight for the vacant title against Jose Zepeda on Saturday at Dignity Health Sports Park in Carson, California. Prograis won by 11th-round TKO.

The fight was promoted by Marvin Rodriguez, a Southern California businessman whose company, MarvNation, was hired by Legendz Entertainment to do the show. Legendz does not have a promoter's license in California, and so hired MarvNation to promote it. The show, though, was funded by Legendz and it was Legendz that put up the $2.4 million so that MarvNation could win the purse bid for the right to promote the fight.

On Wednesday morning, Prograis tweeted that his check, which was in the amount of $1,251,082.64, was returned for insufficient funds. Roger Ruiz, a managing partner for Legendz, told Yahoo Sports the problem arose because the account at Wells Fargo was new.

Andy Foster, the executive director of the California State Athletic Commission, said he'd verified prior to the fight that Legendz had more than enough money to stage the fight.

But because the account, opened at a Wells Fargo bank branch in Downey, California, was new and a lot of money in large amounts was going in and out of it in a short period of time, the bank put a brief hold on it, Ruiz said.

During a conversation with Ruiz, Prograis texted Yahoo Sports to confirm he'd received the first 50%. Ruiz said regulations would not allow the bank to send the entire payment at once. The second half of the money is to be paid Thursday.

"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]."

The show drew only 4,302 to Dignity Health Sports Park and a source said the pay-per-view sales were approximately 20,000.