By Dave Lahr: No one is giving former WBO heavyweight champion Shannon Briggs (51-5-1, 45 KO’s) a chance to beat World Boxing Council heavyweight champion Vitali Klitschko (40-2, 38 KO’s) on October 16th, but me. I’m the only one, and I’m going to be sitting here gloating about it afterwards when Briggs destroys Klitschko in four or five rounds.

That’s all it’s going to take for Briggs to rip away Vitali’s title and bring it home with him. Briggs is going to take Vitali’s heart and serve it on a platter for dinner. I see this fight getting out of hand early on when Briggs tears up the skin around both of Klitschko’s eyes and has him bleeding like a stuck pig. For boxing fans that aren’t too familiar with Vitali, he has very brittle skin around his eyes.

It rips like paper when it’s hit and with the kind of big power that Briggs has going for him, he’s going to have Vitali’s shin ripped to shreds very early in the fight. If you remember Vitali’s loss to Lennox Lewis in 2003, Vitali was bleeding like no tomorrow by the 4th round and was a bloody mess as stumbled around the ring trying to grab Lewis at every opportunity.

Lewis wasn’t having any of Vitali’s clinching tactics and started ripping him apart with big uppercuts every time Vitali would clinch with him. Finally, the referee had to step in and save Vitali from being bled out by Lewis by stopping the fight. Had the referee let the fight continue much longer, we might have seen Klitschko pass out from blood loss.

I’ve never seen so much blood before and after that fight. Briggs needs to go after Vitali’s eyes. That’s the number #1 priority for Shannon. He’s got to go for the eyes and start slashing him with shots. He doesn’t have to do anything out of the ordinary to get the blood flowing. Just punching naturally will have Vitali’s blood pouring from his eyes like leaky facet.

Once Vitali is bleeding like a Halloween fright mask, Briggs really needs to pour it on. He has to have a lead built up so that when the fight is stopped, he can get the win by technical decision. Briggs has to see this fight as really being a four rounder. Nothing matters but the first rounds because Vitali will be bleeding too much to continue after the 4th.