By Steve Kim
Shannon Briggs - who faces Mike Marrone this Saturday night in Hollywood, Florida - recently had another altercation with heavyweight champion Wladmir Klitschko. Like their other run-ins of the past, they took place suspiciously as camera crews were present. As usual, TMZ reported on it .
But Briggs swears none of this is staged.
"Nothing's planned. If I see him right now it's going to be another thing going down," he recently stated just a few days prior to his latest meeting with Klitschko.
For Briggs, this is his way of making waves and beginning the process of promoting this potential fight.
"I know being retired, being out of the game, I knew that I was hands off to all the promoters. No one wanted to touch me. I said,'I'm going to do my own thing.' I took a page out of the Jack Johnson book, I took a page out of the great Muhammad Ali's book to get a fight with this guy. I'm going to have to become a nuisance and with the blessing of social media today you can put something out in five minutes, the whole world can see it."
Both Klitschko and Briggs spend a lot of time in Hollywood, Florida training.
"I know where he lives," said the 43-year old Briggs." And the cops told me not to come over there no more. So they said,'Shannon, we like you but please don't come to his house, his neighborhood anymore.'"
Briggs reiterates - "Nothing's planned, nothing's staged. I'm going to become heavyweight champion of the world, he's going to have to give me a fight because the media. The media and the people want it. Non-boxing fans, over 40 million people have watched our encounters. Over 40 milion views on Youtube of all my encounters with him. So now it's going to keep adding up, it's going to keep building up to where the people demand it.
"I want the people to make the fight."
Steve Kim is the news editor for BoxingScene.com.