by David P. Greisman
Shannon Briggs was of course in New York City for Wladimir Klitschko’s heavyweight championship fight with Bryant Jennings this past weekend. Briggs wants a fight with Klitschko and has been seen confronting him on various occasions, always with at least one camera already rolling, a grassroots publicity effort he hopes will get him a shot at Klitschko without actually earning it with quality wins.
Briggs, speaking at Friday’s weigh-in prior to a confrontation with titleholder Deontay Wilder, says he deserves a title fight based on his past accomplishments. He was briefly the lineal champion himself during the 1990s after a controversial decision win over George Foreman in 1997. He lost immediately thereafter to Lennox Lewis. And Briggs picked up a sanctioning body belt in 2006 after a last-minute stoppage of Sergei Liakhovich, losing it immediately thereafter to Sultan Ibragimov.
Klitschko thinks Briggs is asking for more trouble than he realizes.
“We need to save Shannon Briggs from Shannon Briggs,” Klitschko said at the post-fight press conference following his decision win over Jennings. Briggs was conspicuously absent from the gathering. “He’s getting himself in trouble. He need to remember when he was fighting Vitali what happened.”
That’s in reference to Wladimir’s older brother, Vitali Klitschko, who dominated Briggs and put him in the hospital for days in 2010. Briggs has said that he was fighting with one arm, suffering an injury to the other. He spent three and a half years away before returning in April 2014 and has won seven in a row against very limited opposition since then. He is now 43 years old and is 58-6-1 with 51 KOs and one no contest for a positive drug test.
“I hope he’s really aware of what he’s actually doing with his provocations and trying to get in the ring with me,” Wladimir Klitschko said. “If such fight is going to happen, it’s not going to be Bryant Jennings-Klitschko fight. It’s going to be a little different. As for now, he’s not mandatory. As for now, Shannon Briggs is out there. Why’s he not here tonight? I’m actually surprised.”
It’s easy to wonder whether Klitschko’s camp has been in on Briggs’ stunts, given that Briggs even ended up in the same row as Klitschko’s wife during last November’s bout in Germany against Kubrat Pulev. But while Klitschko has tolerated some of what Briggs has done, he said that Briggs has also gone over the line at times.
“I’m finding it funny, too, until it’s getting really over the edge and somebody follow me in the restaurant or especially in the water, which was not funny,” Klitschko said. “We can laugh about it, but chasing me with a speedboat while I was paddle-boarding … it’s not funny. It’s just ridiculously bad. I hope we just really can save Shannon Briggs from Shannon Briggs before he does any stupid things.”
Pick up a copy of David’s book, “Fighting Words: The Heart and Heartbreak of Boxing,” at http://bit.ly/fightingwordsamazon or internationally at http://bit.ly/fightingwordsworldwide. Send questions/comments via email at fightingwords1@gmail.com
