wladimir44465 (Picture Credit: KMG/Michael Sterling Eaton) By Scott Gilfoid: Former WBO heavyweight champion Shannon Briggs (53-6-1, 47 KO’s) busted up IBF/IBO/WBA/WBO heavyweight champion Wladimir Klitschko’s press conference in Germany, and called him out for a fight. Briggs ended up taking his shirt off and throwing it at Wladimir, which missed him and almost hit his opponent Alex Leapai (30-4-3, 24 KO’s). Leapai then said to Briggs,”After this fight, me and you bring it on.”

Briggs had said on his twitter earlier that he was going to fly over to Germany to sit on Wladimir’s press conference, and it was predictable this was going to happen once he made that announcement.

Leapai vs. Briggs would be an interesting fight, and I could see that as a toss-up fight, to be honest. Leapai is a big puncher, but he’s little at 6-feet, and Briggs can still punch despite being a little long in the tooth at 42. Briggs obviously will never get a fight against Wladimir, and he’s wasting his time in interrupting his workout sessions like this.

The only way that Briggs is going to get a fight against Wladimir is if he takes some scalps from some of the top heavyweight contenders, and gets ranked high enough to get the fight. My guess is Wladimir won’t bother fight to fight Briggs unless he becomes his mandatory challenger, which means Briggs has got a long ways to go before he gets to that level, if he ever does. If Briggs fights once per week for the remainder of 2014, he might be able to get the No.1 ranking, but I kind of doubt. Briggs will likely suffer some kind of injury at some point and that will slow the process way down even if he does beat a contender or two along the way.

Leapai is fighting Wladimir this Saturday night at the Koenig Pilsener Arena, Oberhausen, Nordrhein-Westfalen, Germany. In terms of Wladimir’s title defenses, this is one of the less interesting ones that he’s had since his title defense against Jean Marc Mormeck in 2012. We’re talking mismatch here, and you’ve got to put it on the WBO for letting Leapai fight Denis Boytsov in an eliminator bout instead of having two higher quality heavyweight contenders fighting it out.