By Jim Dower: Former WBO heavyweight champion Shannon Briggs (51-5-1, 45 KO’s) is predicting a “30 second” knockout over 39-year-old WBC heavyweight champion Vitali Klitschko (40-2, 38 KO’s) in boxing news from ESPN.com. Briggs, 38, says he’s going to make Klitschko a “30-second, 1st round victim. That’s how a lot of my fights end.” Klitschko and Briggs will be meeting on October 16th at the O2 World Arena, Altona, in Hamburg, Germany. Briggs lost his WBO heavyweight title against Russian Sultan Ibragimov in 2007. However, after sitting idle for more than two years, Briggs has rattled off four consecutive 1st round knockout victories over 2nd tier opposition and has looked very impressive in doing so.

You can point to Briggs’ poor opposition for part of the reason why he’s been so successful. However, you have to have talent to score that many 1st round knockouts over the solid B level fighters that Briggs has been fighting lately. Briggs is a classic knockout artist. Of his 45 knockouts on his record, an incredible 30 of them have come in the 1st round of his fights. That makes Briggs a very dangerous opponent for the 39-year-old Klitschko, who has looked old and slow and in his last two fights against Kevin Johnson and Alberto Sosnowski.

Klitschko appears to have lost something in terms of hand speed from his win over Chris Arreola in 2009 and his victory over Kevin Johnson in late 2009. Klitschko is starting to get hit a lot more than he ever did before and his hand speed is slowing down to the point where it’s difficult for him to land right hands because the target is moving by the time his slow shots get to where he was originally aiming.

Briggs put on a lot of weight after his loss to Ibragimov in 2007, going from a solid 270 to a fat 335. Briggs says that he got his motivation to stage a comeback after meeting Vitali in a restaurant in Los Angeles, saying “I was fat and he [Klitschko] touched my stomach. And in that moment right there I decided to come back. He should have left me alone.” It appears that Briggs was ashamed of his conditioning and vowed to get back in tip top shape and beat Vitali.

Right now, you’d have to give Briggs a decent chance of beating Vitali, because the older Klitschko brother is easy to hit now and the 6’4” Briggs will have both the size at 6’4” and the hand speed to connect with Klitschko. The power and the hand speed advantage rests with Briggs. He’s a lot better puncher than Vitali is and his hand speed makes him even more of a threat to the slow moving, slow punching Klitschko.