By Jason Kim: For fans of World Boxing Council heavyweight champion Vitali Klitschko (40-2, 38 KO’s), they may get the opportunity to see his next fight against 38-year-old former WBO heavyweight champion Shannon Briggs (51-5-1, 45 KO’s) on ESPN, according to boxing news from Dan Rafael of ESPN.

The fight will be taking place at the O2 World Arena, Altona, in Hamburg, Germany. HBO already passed on this fight and won’t be showing it to viewers. However, if ESPN shows the fight it will be an opportunity for fans of Briggs and Vitali to see them fight without having to watch it on pay per view or be limited to just seeing clips of the fight.

Vitali, 38, will be making his 5th defense of his WBC heavyweight title. Vitali has run into a dry spell in terms of interesting opponents. In his last fight, Vitali wiped out European heavyweight Alberto Sosnowski in a dull 10th round TKO in May.

Aside from hardcore boxing fans, few people had ever heard of Sosnowski. You can see why, because he looked very average and was never really competitive in the least with Vitali in that fight. Vitali toyed with him for nine rounds and then got serious took him out in the 10th.

t looked as if Vitali was carrying Sosnowski all that time to try and give his fans a chance to see more of him.
Briggs has done pretty much zero since losing his World Boxing Organization heavyweight title to Sultan Ibragimov in June 2007.

Briggs has fought four B level fighters since then to get the shot against Vitali. You can’t really say that Briggs has earned the shot against Klitschko because the best fighter that Briggs has faced in the past three years is probably journeyman Rob Calloway, who Briggs stopped in one round in May.

Briggs earned his title shot years ago against Sergiy Liakhovich in the same way, beating a string of 2nd tier fighters before getting a shot against Liakhovich. Briggs has made no secret what he intends on trying to do with Vitali. He’s going to come out fast and try to take Vitali out as fast as he can.

That’s really Briggs’ only chance of winning this fight because he doesn’t have the same boxing skills that Vitali has and he fades badly once the fight goes past six rounds. Vitali will likely stay away from Briggs and pick him apart round by round until taking him out in the 9th or 10th rounds.