Deontay Wilder and Shannon Briggs liven up a dull Klitschko-Jennings weigh-in

By Boxing News - 04/24/2015 - Comments

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By Scott Gilfoid: Former WBO heavyweight champ Shannon Briggs and WBC heavyweight champion Deontay Wilder both lived up what was an otherwise dull weigh-in for IBF/IBO/WBA/WBO heavyweight champion Wladimir Klitschko (63-3, 53 KOs) and challenger Bryant Jennings (19-0, 10 KOs). Briggs initially was taunting Wladimir by repeatedly saying “Let’s go champ” in a move that appears to be designed to get the 39-year-old Wladimir to agree to fight him.

But before you know it Briggs and Wilder began jawing at each other with former heavyweight champion Lennox Lewis standing in between them taking video. It was funny to watch Lewis turned into a mere spectator in just filming it with a smile on his face. He obviously was enjoying this.

Unfortunately for Wladimir, he was kind of forgotten by the spectators, as they focused a lot of their attention on Wilder and Briggs rather than on the big Ukrainian. It was still a positive for Wladimir because his weigh-in event had a lot more electricity than it otherwise would have had.

“I’m talking on all comers,” Wilder said to Briggs. “This ain’t Wladimir Klitschko here, not at all. I don’t play boxing. I take it seriously.”

Briggs then said “I’m a former champion. They gave you that belt. I’ll knock you out. I’ll knock you out cold. Let’s go champ.”

While Briggs was trash talking Wilder, I think his main focus is trying to get Wladimir to agree to fight him. If they stage a Briggs vs. Klitschko fight in a large stadium in Germany, Briggs could in theory make a lot of money if he’s able to negotiate a good split of the revenue.

Of course, if Wladimir insists on taking the huge lion’s share of the booty, then the fight might not be worth taking for Briggs. He would need to get a good split of the money for it to be worth fighting Wladimir instead of Deontay. A Wilder vs. Briggs fight would attract a lot of interest from American fans even though the 43-year-old Briggs is well past his prime at this point in his career.

Briggs has won his last seven fights since making his comeback last year in April 2014. Of his seven wins, Briggs has knocked out six of his opponents in the 1st round. In his last fight, he stopped Zoltan Petranyi in the 1st round last March.

Briggs told Wilder to have his adviser Al Haymon give him a call so that they can start setting up a fight. However, I don’t think Briggs is really serious about wanting to fight Deontay. Like I said, Briggs can potentially make huge money fighting Wladimir if he can get him to get a good split of the money.

I don’t know if HBO made the right decision in choosing to televise the Klitschko-Jennings fight or not because it just doesn’t look like the boxing fans have warmed up to this fight. It’s being ignored for the most part in internet forums because it’s perceived as a mismatch.

When you have a fight that’s seen as a mismatch by boxing fans it forces the fighters to go over the top with their promotion of the fight so that boxing fans at least get interested in that part of the event, but Wladimir unfortunately has been as low keep for this fight as he always has.

With Wladimir being polite and Jennings not saying much, it’s left it up to Briggs be the guy that has made Klitschko’s press conferences/weigh-in interesting. It’s hard to believe that after fighting as a pro for the past 19 years that Wladimir still doesn’t know how to generate interest in his fights.



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