Hamburg, Germany is the home to Vitali Klitschko’s latest defense of his WBC heavyweight belt, if you want to call it that. Klitschko will face Shannon “The Cannon” Briggs and the only people giving Briggs any chance are the people in his camp.
Klitschko comes in with 1/20 odds to win, while Briggs is 9/1.
Vitali (40-2, 38 KOs) was chosen for this fight over his younger brother, IBF, WBO, IBO and Ring Magazine titlist Wladimir (54-3, 48 KOs), because he is considered the tougher of the two.
It also didn’t hurt that Vitali’s two losses were questionable, if not unconvincing.
In April 2000, Klitschko easily outclassed Chris Byrd (40-6-1, 22 KOs) for nine rounds before he was forced to quit due to a torn rotator cuff. In June three years later, Klitschko was beating legendary heavyweight champion, Lennox Lewis (41-2-1, 32 KOs), after six rounds of captivating action.
That is, until the referee stopped the contest prior to the start of the seventh round and awarded Lewis the victory due to a severe gash over Klitschko’s left eye.
Klitschko has not once been knocked to the canvas in a professional bout and he owns the highest knockout percentage (95%) of any heavyweight in history.
The only thing Briggs (51-5, 45 KOs) seems to have going for him is his quick hands, though he has yet to prove he can use them to connect to a top-flight opponent at the top of his game.
Briggs has fought plenty of tomato cans and look quite good doing it, but has been on the verge of losing every fight in which he stepped up in competition. That doesn’t bode well for his chance at the title this time.
Look for Vitali to end this fight fairly quickly through a demonstration of power, as Briggs tries to figure out a way to connect with his quick gloves.
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