By Dave Lahr: Former WBO heavyweight champion Shannon Briggs (51-5-1, 45 KO’s) has trimmed his heavily muscled frame down to a sleek 242 lbs for his fight against World Boxing Council (WBC) heavyweight champion Vitali Klitschko (40-2, 38 KO’s) on October 16th at the O2 World Arena, Altona, in Hamburg, Germany. For Briggs, this is the lowest weight for him since he came in at 230 for a 1st round blowout of Russell Chasteen in April 2001. I think Vitali is going to have a major problem on his hands in trying to stop the powerful and now light on his feet Briggs when they meet up in Germany.

Briggs has made the mistake of fighting in the 260s and 270s in the past nine years and carrying around all that useless muscle has hurt him in big fights against Sultan Ibragimov and Jameel McCline. But now that Briggs is down to nearly where he was at when he gave Lennox Lewis a tons of problems back in 1998, I think Klitschko has got a real problems on his hands here. This fight couldn’t have come at a worst time for Vitali. He’s looked slow, lethargic and incredibly hittable in his last two fights against Kevin Johnson and Albert Sosnowski and Vitali looks as if he’s lost something.

He looks like he’s aged five years in the past year, and his hand speed appears to have dropped off to the point where he’s looking his age now. Vitali is 39, an age where most fighters are long retired. Vitali is trying to hold on for as long as possibly hoping against hope that he can get a big money fight against WBA heavyweight champion David Haye before he retires from boxing. However, Vitali might as well hang up the gloves now because Haye doesn’t appear eager to fight either of the klitschkos, so Vitali should retire, especially if Briggs ends up knocking him out.

In the recent training video of Briggs, he looks very powerful and dangerous with either hand. He’s ripping through his sparring partners and knocking them down without even loading up on his shots. Briggs reminds me of George Foreman the way he’s able to generate huge amounts of power without getting low or having to bend his knees. Briggs is standing straight up and coming up with big power just from his huge arms. That’s how Vitali fights.

If Briggs can still get huge power without even loading up on his shots, he’s going to be giving Vitali all kinds of problems because Vitali generally takes advantage of his opponents when they have to dip to throw a shot. Vitali, who just stands straight up, hits them with numerous arm punches in the time that it takes for them to throw their shots. But Briggs can beat Vitali at his own game and rip him up or stop him outright with a big shot to the head.

Briggs still has a little more time to train for the Klitschko fight and he could possibly get down to the mid 230s for the fight. That would make Briggs even faster.