By Scott Gilfoid: WBC heavyweight champion Deontay Wilder (35-0, 34 KOs) says he’d like to defend his WBC title next month on January 16th against 44-year-old #5 WBA Shannon Briggs (59-6-1, 52 KOs) if he’s willing to accept the money offer for the fight at the Barclays Center in Brooklyn, New York.
Wilder, 6’7”, was recently disappointed when the opponent that he wanted to fight on 1/16, #3 WBC Vyacheslav Glazkov, jumped ship and decided he preferred to go after the IBF heavyweight title that was recently won by Britain’s Tyson Fury.
With Glazkov out of the running for his fight next month, Wilder and his promoters and adviser do not have much time to find a talented replacement by next month. That’s where someone like Briggs could come in to save the day if a fight between him and Deontay can be successfully negotiated in just one month.
It’s obviously a hardship for the hard hitting KO artist Briggs to get ready for a fighter in Wilder’s class with a training camp that would be all of one month, but if Wilder and his promoters can sweeten the pot enough, they might be able to get Briggs to agree to the fight.
“The only person I feel will save this show is Shannon Briggs,” Wilder said to TMZ.com. “Will he accept the money that we’re offering him? Shannon feels he’s bigger than he really is … which he’s not.”
With Briggs being ranked at No.5 by the World Boxing Association, it puts him in position to get a nice payday against Tyson Fury if he holds onto his WBA title long enough for Briggs to get a shot against him. If Fury gets whipped by Wladimir Klitschko in their rematch in the first quarter of 2016, then that puts Briggs back in line for a badly wanted title fight against the soon to be 40-year-old Wladimir.
Briggs can make a lot of money fighting Klitschko, because the German fans are really interested in a fight between the two of them. Wladimir could stage a fight against Briggs in one of the giant stadiums in Germany and count on a maximum capacity crowd filling it. Wilder obviously wouldn’t be able to fill a 50,000 seat stadium in the United States in a fight against Briggs.
At best, we’re probably talking about Wilder vs. Briggs selling out half of the 18,000 seats for a fight like that. Those would still be great numbers, but obviously not at the same level as a Klitschko fight. For that reason, I think Briggs will reject an offer from Deontay unless it’s fairly big money.
The thing is Briggs can’t count on a fight against Wladimir any longer because there’s a better than average chance that the Ukrainian fighter gets beaten by Fury in the rematch next year. I mean, Wladimir has the punching power to blast Fury into oblivion if he were to let his hands go, but I think Wladimir can’t pull the trigger on his shots any longer. He only seems comfortable letting his hands go when he’s fighting a guy that stands directly in front of him without using head movement or constant feints the way that Fury does.
Briggs has won eight consecutive fights since staging his comeback in 2014. He’s been fighting pretty much horrible opposition each time, but he’s been doing the job on them in scoring 1st round knockouts. The sanctioning bodies will give fighters breaks when they face the kind of 3rd tier fodder that Briggs has been facing when they’re able to knock their opponents out in the 1st round like he’d been doing.
To say the least, Briggs has been very impressive with his ability to score fast round knockouts. The way that Briggs is punching, I think he’d have knocked out all of the same guys that #2 WBC Anthony Joshua has fought since he turned pro, but I think he would do it much faster than Joshua.
Briggs destroyed Michael Marrone in two rounds last September. Like in his previous seven fights, Briggs displayed devastating punching power with both hands.
Wilder last fought in September in beating Johann Duhaupas by an 11th round knockout at the Legacy Arena in Birmingham, Alabama. The fight was televised on Premier Boxing Champions.
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