By Mark Hepplestall: There have been many articles stating how Shannon Briggs is going to destroy Vitali and how Vitali is going to get KO’d in the first 4 rounds, this is the biggest hype job to disguise the fact its America’s last chance for a long time to get a World Heavyweight Champion. In fact all of the writers who are writing articles portraying Shannon Briggs as the saviour of the heavyweight should be ashamed of themselves. Firstly I just want to point out I am a Vitali Klitschko fan, yet very disappointed with his choice in opposition for this fight. Truly in this fight Shannon Briggs has only a punchers chance, and when fighting a guy called Dr Ironfist or could be called Dr Ironchin it just shows that even that punchers chance is diminishing fast.

Vitali Klistchko has a 42 fight record consisting of 40 wins, 38 by KO and 2 losses on cuts, while Shannon Briggs has a 58 fight record consisting of 51 wins, 45 by the way of KO to 5 losses and 1 draw. Looking at both records even though Shannon Briggs has had more fights the opposition are totally inferior to Vitali’s opposition. Shannon Briggs has fought mostly B and C level boxers from America and everybody knows how bad the American Heavyweight division is, also the majority of his fights are in the USA except one in Puerto Rico which is inside American Territory so let’s say 100% of his fights are inside the USA, how will he react to a hostile German crowd? Also foreign boxers are never protected as much as home boxers in USA, UK and Germany, so how will he react to this?

The questions people should be asking is how is Shannon going to fight a guy who will not fall down after being hit once? Vitali has the best defence in the business with his combination of height and leaning back to get out of range then using his crisp jab to win the rounds, this is without adding the fact that taking 25 – 40 jabs with 250lb’s behind each one starts to add up by the 4th round to a devastating KO when the opposition get caught in corners or get wild raising the tempo and leave themselves open to Vitali’s attacks.

Back to Shannon Briggs’s punchers chance, 30 of Shannon Briggs fights have ended in the first round by KO or TKO, which shows he starts fast and can bang but the opposition that got KO’d were very weak. Another worry for the Shannon fans would be his asthma, this is a worry as he struggles to get past 4 rounds and that is why he tries to end the majority of his fights in the first 4 rounds. So if Shannon Briggs comes out for the first 4 rounds and throws the kitchen sink at Vitali and doesn’t hurt him he is just going to get out-boxed for the rest of the fight until Shannon throws in the towel.

Good news for this fight is that Shannon Briggs is losing weight and is the lightest he has been for his last 20 fights; he has lost about 24lbs to date to get down to 242lbs and now that the fight looms closer cardiovascular workouts should be central to his workouts. The only worry is that he may be weight drained for the fight and this may hurt his power game.

Overall I don’t expect this fight to be competitive, I have been very critical of Vitali in previous articles for this fight considering there are so many more boxers who deserve a shot instead of going for a totally regressed fighter with a good name alone. This fight will not pass the 6th round, Shannon will come out and throw everything he has at Vitali and realize this is going to be a very hard task while Vitali boxes and moves just like he did against Arreola. The only difference between this fight and the Arreola fight will be that Arreola threw in the towel at the 10th while Shannon could be leaving in an ambulance.