By John Hively
The boxing career of Shannon “the Brooklyn Cannon” Briggs might best be described as a series of buildups all leading to nowhere. The latest buildup has seen the native of New York City score some spectacular knockouts over a batch of carefully selected and unspectacular opponents. Most super-hardcore boxing fans may never have heard of some of his most recent victims with the exception of the ancient and well-worn Ray Mercer, a formidable force in the heavyweight division nearly a decade ago.
Now, however, we see that Briggs' management team has decided to roll the dice and take a chance in a fight against Serguei Lyakhovich, recent winner over the formerly red-hot Lamon Brewster.
Before agreeing to do battle with Lyakhovich, it looked as though Briggs was going to receive an undeserved shot at Wladimir Klitschko, the man who some people think of as being the best heavyweight around, although there are a number of contenders who could easily dispute this assertion, most notably Brewster and Lyakhovich. Surprisingly, many keen observers of heavyweight boxing gave Shannon a good chance of being competitive against Wladimir, and some even suggested he had the skills, punch and endurance to pull off an upset.
However, if Briggs were all that gifted compared to the Ukrainian, it is he rather than Klitschko who would have been successfully fighting some of the best heavyweights in the world for the last seven years, rather than the string of unknown and washed-up opponents that have largely been his career trademark, especially as of late.
It is a good time for Briggs to step-up in opposition, and likewise it may be a good thing that he received the shot at Lyakhovich rather than Klitschko. Styles make fights, and a battle between Wladimir and Shannon would most likely have been a dreadful mismatch. The titanic gulf separating the two in terms of skill, speed, experience, size, power and achievements all favored the Ukrainian.
Some experts suggested that Briggs might have stopped Klitschko if he could have connected to his jaw, and that the Brooklyn native possessed all of the underachieving athletic ability to somehow pull off this feat. Many of these predictions were based somewhat on the perceived weaknesses of the Ukrainian’s chin and endurance. Although Wald has been stopped three times in forty-nine bouts, two of those losses were due in part to stamina problems.
In the other loss, Corrie Sanders successfully launched a fistic blitzkrieg against him and scored four knockdowns in two rounds a few years ago, but Wladimir kept getting up, meaning that Sanders couldn’t keep him down. Maybe that chin isn’t quite as soft as some people think. The stamina quandary seems to be a thing of the past, and his boxing skills and confidence have improved steadily over the last year or so, making his somewhat underrated jaw just that much more difficult to connect with. Don’t get me wrong, the Ukrainian hardly possesses a chin of stainless steel—far from it. Briggs, on the other hand, was stopped in three rounds by someone named Darroll Wilson some years back, and this suggests that he may possess a jaw somewhat less resistant to heavy handed fists than is the case of Wald’s chin.
Briggs also has faded down the stretch against some of the better opponents he has faced, and all of this may imply that his alleged advantages in durability and stamina are overstated by a fairly wide margin. In fact, one could easily argue that Waldimir is superior to Shannon in punch resistance, stamina and athleticism.
Briggs would have had two chances to defeat the Ukrainian in the ring: slim and none. The Brooklyn Cannon and his team most likely would have tried one of two tactics to trounce his opponent had they actually met in the ring. One plan would have been to fight aggressively and hope to connect early and often, thus stopping the big guy. The only problem with that strategy is that Wladimir has more skill, speed, size and power, and by a wide margin, and the likely result of such a tactic would have been a massacre that would have ended within two rounds, and not in favor of Briggs.
The second likely tactic would have been for Shannon to run for several rounds in the hope that his opponent would tire, thereby leaving his tiring adversary open for a knockout blow in a late round. The problem with that strategy is that Briggs isn’t noted for his resilience while Klitschko has shown improved endurance. If the Brooklyn native used such a tactic, Wald would most likely have gradually broken him down and stopped him in six or less lopsided and boring sessions.
Lyakhovich presents different problems for Briggs, and it is possible, however unlikely, that the alleged Brooklyn Underachiever could overcome them and actually score a legitimate win over a genuine contender for the first time in his fourteen year career. The gift decision Briggs once received over the ancient George Foreman years ago was considered by many to be the worst verdict of 1997. If a prime Briggs couldn’t legitimately defeat such a fossil as Old George, then a person can be forgiven for questioning his chances against his newest and most formidable opponent since Lennox Lewis stopped him in five rounds many years ago.
Although Serguei is improving, he doesn’t possess the impressive technical skills of Klitschko, but it does appear that he is closing the gap. He hasn’t consistently shown the heavy artillery that Wald possesses, but he does have serious power, and this he demonstrated in his triumph over Brewster a few months ago. Unlike Klitschko who rarely punches to the body, Lyakhovich pounds to the body with great effect, and this may have been the decisive factor in his win over Lamon. Worse yet for Briggs, his soon-to-be Russian rival shows much better instinct in the squared circle than Wladimir.
At one point in his battle against Brewster, the American was unmercifully pounding Serguei along the ropes with no escape in sight, and so the battered Russian intelligently dipped his knee to the canvas and took a short count rather than allow him self to be badly mauled and battered to the mat by his opponent. In the ninth round, Lyakhovich came back and landed a big right hand bomb to Brewster’s jaw and turned the fight in his favor.
The win over Lamon showed that the Russian also takes a better punch to the whiskers than does Klitschko, and maybe even to the body. This victory also proved that he has great stamina. The ability to take a punch and stamina are the two great hypothetical and overrated advantages some experts said Briggs possesses against Klitschko; but he would be at a conspicuous disadvantage against Sergeui in these categories, as well as in several other areas.
At the age of thirty-five, the alleged Brooklyn Underachiever is approaching a crossroads fight lacking the big time experience so necessary to making such a big jump in adversarial quality. Because Lyakhovich punches a little less harder than Wlad, and his jab and other technical skills are not in the same league, Briggs may have a slightly better chance in this upcoming bout to prove that he really has been a major underachiever for fourteen years. Yet, it’s difficult to envision the Cannon ever being much more than a tough and overly protected trial horse, much less picking him as a likely winner over any major heavyweight contender, such as Lyakhovich, Klitschko or Brewster.
But, this could be his last chance to achieve real contender status, and if he has ever really been as fistically well-endowed as his supporters claim, if he has ever really been an underachiever, his next fight may be the final opportunity to prove it.
