By Adam Fillingham: There is only one direction now for big Shannon Briggs and that is retirement. But he should retire happy with a performance to be proud of against the heavyweight champion of the world Vitali Klitschko.

Shannon didn’t even fight that well. In fact it was quite a poor performance. But what he can be proud of is that he had what no other American heavyweight challenger has had in years. That is determination, heart, guts and a granite chin.

I look back at fights with Eddie Chambers, Chris Arreola, Tony Thompson, Hasim Rahman and most importantly Kevin Johnson. None of the fighters above showed any of the attributes that Shannon showed last night against a Klitschko and Briggs was written off more times than all five of the above fighters put together.

There was very little chance Briggs was going to win the fight even from the first bell but even when he was getting hit repeatedly he stayed on his feet and went toe to toe with the 6 foot 7 giant. Did you see Kevin Johnson do that? No.

But this fight shouldn’t be all about Shannon Briggs, he did lose after all and to be blunt did not deserve to be in the ring with Vitali to begin with. Vitali put in arguably his best performance since his return in 2008. His right hand in particular was powerful and accurate as well as his jab which in the usual Klitschko fashion was used to perfection.

Vitali apparently punches from his arms these days and I agree from what I saw but he could still produce one hell of a right hand. Finally his speed for a 39 year old heavyweight was something most other heavyweights in the division can only dream of.

So what is next for the two warriors?

Well as I stated at the beginning of the article Shannon must retire. He is 38 now and well he just doesn’t have it anymore, along with the fact he is asthmatic. The former heavyweight champion if the world has had a good career and as he stated in an interview before the fight; “I’m not the greatest heavyweight of all time, but I’m the greatest asthmatic of all time”.

For Vitali Klitschko its back to looking for a viable opponent in a dormant division. There are a couple of fights out there such as a unification bout with David Haye if both sides could agree and as long as Haye gets by Audley Harrison, which most people will agree he should do. There are also fights with Thomasz Adamek (if he can get by Vinny Maddalone), Denis Boytsov when he recovers from a hand injury or the winner of the bout between Odlanier Solis and Ray Austin.