By Jim Dower: Former WBO heavyweight champion Shannon Briggs (51-6-1, 45 KO’s) is still hospitalized in Hamburg, Germany, after sustaining a terrible beating in a 12 round unanimous decision loss to World Boxing Council heavyweight champion Vitali Klitschko (41-2, 38 KO’s) on Saturday night at the O2 World Arena, in Hamburg, Germany. Briggs, 38, took enormous punishment from Klitschko from the 1st round until the end of the fight, but somehow he was able to stay upright and make it to the end of the fight without going down or being stopped.

According to news from Dan Rafael of ESPN, Briggs suffered a broken left orbital bone in his face along with a broken nose and a badly torn left biceps. You could see after the fight that Briggs’ left biceps didn’t look right, as it was rolled up in a ball. Of the injuries, the torn left biceps is the most serious because it will require at least two surgeries to repair the damage. There were no brain injuries, thankfully. Briggs was competitive in the fight and ended up losing the bout by the lopsided decision scores of 120-107, 120-105 and 120-107.

Realistically, the bout probably should have been stopped by the 7th round, which is when Klitschko hurt Briggs for the first time with some huge right hands that drove Shannon into the ropes. Before that, Briggs had been taking huge right hands in the all of the previous rounds and was unable to block or get out of the way of the shots. Briggs’ offense was pretty much limited to landing an occasional body shot here and there. He rarely was able to connect to Vitali’s head. Briggs did his best work during the two or three clinches that Vitali initiated in the fight. Briggs took those rare opportunities to land hard whipping body shots that reddened the left side of Klitschko’s midsection.

Unfortunately for Briggs, that’s about all he could do. He didn’t have the arm length or the speed to catch Vitali. From rounds eight until twelve, the fight was almost sickening to watch. Briggs was just taking terrible punishment to the head that slowly turned his face red and took much of then enjoyment out of the fight.

The referee Ian John-Lewis chose not to stop the fight for some reason, even though it was clear that Briggs was just taking punishment and not landing anything substantial in the last six rounds of the slaughter. Hopefully, Briggs will be able to recover from this beating and resume his boxing career once his injuries heal. He needs to take it easy for awhile and focus on softer opponents once he does resume his boxing career.