By Dave Lahr: WBC heavyweight champion Vitali Klitschko (40-2, 38 KO’s) has a bad habit of fighting with his hands down by his sides, letting his head movement and leaning keep him from taking punishment. Since Klitschko has mainly fought soft opposition since his 6th round stoppage by Lennox Lewis in 2003, he’s been able to get away with his hands down at his waist. In his fight with Corrie Sanders in 2004, Vitali took some big shots in that fight and was nearly knocked down in the 1st round. Vitali came back and stopped the out of shape looking Sanders in the 8th round. On Saturday night, Klitschko will be facing Shannon Briggs (51-5-1, 45 KO’s) at the O2 World Arena, in Hamburg, Germany.

Briggs has the same reach, better power and hand speed and is almost as tall as Vitali at 6’4″. But more importantly, Briggs has Lennox Lewis type power in both hands. We already saw what Lewis did to Vitali’s face back in 2003, and now we’re about to see what the equally powerful Briggs can do to Vitali. To be sure, Vitali will fighting with his hands down much of the time hoping he can make Briggs miss and try to unnerve him. It won’t work, and I see Briggs landing some monstrous shots to the head of Vitali. I don’t know if he’ll knock Vitali out from a single shot, but I think he’s going to stun him and rip the skin around Vitali’s eyes.

In the Lewis fight, Vitali was reduced to clinching and holding once he started getting cut up. He was no longer fighting with any effectiveness and was mostly just trying to keep Lewis from hitting him more by grabbing him all the time. I think Klitschko’s low hands is going to make it easy for Briggs to tee off on head shots against the Ukrainian and get him bleeding all over the pace in a short time. By the time Vitali realizes that he needs to try and protect his head, it will be too late because he’ll already be bleeding all over creation from cuts that he’ll receive. That will make things that much easier for Briggs to end the fight with a big body shot.