Emanuel Steward thinks Briggs will be Vitali Klitschko’s hardest fight of his career

By Boxing News - 10/08/2010 - Comments

Image: Emanuel Steward thinks Briggs will be Vitali Klitschko’s hardest fight of his careerBy Dave Lahr: WBC heavyweight champion Vitali Klitschko (40-2, 38 KO’s) may have his match in former WBO heavyweight champion Shannon Briggs (51-5-1, 45 KO’s) and legendary trainer Emanuel Steward is concerned about Klitschko’s ability to beat the 38-year-old Briggs.

Steward had this to say to Sportbox.ru: “I believe that’ll be the most difficult fight in Vitali’s career. I personally talked to him [Vitali] about it. Briggs is big and he hits hard. Vitali can’t relax as he allowed himself to do in bouts against Albert Sosnowski, Samuel Peter, Etc. Briggs will be very dangerous in the first three rounds.”

Steward is 100% correct. Briggs, 6’4”, is about roughly the same size as Lennox Lewis and hits about as hard as Lewis. Granted, Briggs isn’t capable of throwing as many punches as a younger Lewis used to be able to, but for three to five rounds it’s going to be like Vitali is facing Lewis again.

Briggs has become an even bigger puncher as he’s aged and is now has lethal one punch power in both hands. He’s knocked out his last four opponents and that’s not accident. Briggs is punching very hard and fighting really well in his comeback.

Briggs has dropped weight from 266 in his last fight against Rob Calloway and is presently weighing 242, a good weight for Briggs.

He’s obviously working on his conditioning knowing that he may need it if Klitschko doesn’t fall in the first three rounds like most of his opponents have done. But a light and in shape Briggs is going to be pure evil for Vitali, and he may not make it past the 6th round against Shannon.

If you don’t think Briggs isn’t a threat to knock Klitschko out, then you need to take a look at some of Briggs’ recent fights. He looks just as dangerous as Lewis was and maybe more so. We saw what Lewis was able to do to Vitali’s face in his 6th round stoppage of the Ukrainian in 2003.

And Lewis really didn’t land all that many power punches in the fight, but his power was good that he had Vitali ripped to shreds. Briggs will be landing a lot more than Lewis did in his fight with a younger Klitschko, and we may see Vitali bleeding all over the place and looking to clinch Briggs to get him to stop punching.

If I was Briggs, I’d be working hard on my uppercuts because he’s going to have plenty of opportunities to land them with Klitschko trying to grab him once he’s bleeding like a stuck pig.



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