Briggs-Klitschko: Will Shannon make Vitali look like an old man?

By Dave Lahr: WBC heavyweight champion Vitali Klitschko (40-2, 38 KO’s) turned 39 last July, and he’s starting to show the ravages of age as he’s slowing down and losing his hand speed, the little that he has, and is much easier to hit than he ever was before. On October 16th, Vitali will be facing knockout puncher Shannon Briggs (51-5-1, 45 KO’s) at the O2 World Arena, Altona, in Hamburg, Germany. When you get old all of a sudden, things start to break down on you, and you lose your hand speed.

Briggs has the power and the hand speed to make Vitali look every bit of his age in their fight. What’s going to happen is Briggs is going to be unloading on Klitschko with huge shots from the opening bell, and tearing into his face and ripping him apart. Vitali has been facing fighters with shorter reach, poor hand speed and zero power up until now. This is going to be like Vitali revisiting his fight with Lennox Lewis from 2003, when Klitschko took a royal pounding and was left a bloody mess by Lewis in a 6th round TKO loss.

This is what I think is going to happen to Klitschko. Briggs is going to make him look like an old man ready for his rocker, and in need of his Metamucil and Geritol. The power and the speed differences between Briggs and Klitschko will be shocking, because Vitali is going to look so painfully slow and inept, as Briggs beats him to the punch all night long and blasts away at Klitschko’s paper thin skin and him looking like a slaughtered deer staggering around the canvas looking for a place to hide from Briggs.

There won’t be any hiding place in the ring for Vitali. He’s going to have to take his punishment like a man. I just hope he doesn’t quit like he did with Chris Byrd in 2000. I want this fight to go until Vitali drops or the referee stops the slaughter with Vitali covered with red blood and looking like terrible mess. It’ll be good to have a new champion, one that will have interesting title defenses and show some aggression for a change instead of just jabbing away from the outside the way that Klitschko always does.