By Allan Fox: 42-year-old former WBO heavyweight champion Shannon Briggs (56-6-1, 49 KOs) will be fighting tonight against Richard Carmack (12-5, 10 KOs) tonight in a scheduled 10 round bout at the Isle of Capri Casino, in Lula, Mississippi, USA.

Carmack, 26, weighed in at 308 pounds at Friday’s weigh-in. Briggs weighed 261 pounds.

Carmack is coming onto this fight with a 5-fight losing streak. That’s obviously not a good thing, but Briggs has been taking it easy in his comeback by facing weak opposition instead of 1st tier heavyweight contenders. Surprisingly, the World Boxing Association has Briggs ranked #7 by their organization despite the fact that his opposition has been woeful.

This means that Briggs will likely get a world title shot even if he doesn’t anyone better than Carmack in the next year or two. Ideally, it would be better if Briggs fought a good contender in order to earn a title shot, but if the WBA is going to rank him high without him having to beat anyone of quality then why should he change the level of the opposition he’s facing.

Briggs wants to get a title shot against IBF/IBO/WBA/WBO heavyweight champion Wladimir Klitschko. However, for that to happen, Briggs will need to become Wladimir’s mandatory challenger. I’m not sure if that’s going to happen. Briggs will need to likely beat the current WBA regular heavyweight champion Ruslan Chagaev if he wants to get a shot against Wladimir, and even then, it’s not likely to happen.

Briggs would probably have to defend his title for a while before he can get a fight against Wladimir, and it’s unclear whether Briggs will be able to even defend the belt once without losing. At this point it’s doubtful that Briggs could beat Chagaev to win the WBA title, even though Chagaev is arguably the weakest of the current heavyweight champions by far.