#1 WBC Deontay Wilder thinks that 42-year-old Shannon Briggs (55-6-1, 48 KOs) is wasting his time following IBF/IBO/WBA/WBO heavyweight champion Wladimir Klitschko around trying to get a fight with him by getting into confrontations with him at his gym, in restaurants and at press conferences.
Deontay believes that Briggs is going about it all the wrong way in trying to get Wladimir to fight him. Deontay sees Briggs as trying to get a shot the lazy way by trying to anger Wladimir into fighting him, but he thinks it’s not working. Deontays recommends that Briggs fight his way to a title shot the way other fighters do by taking on the best guys over and over until he eventually gets ranked high enough to get a title shot.
“I don’t think he [Wladimir] should give him [Briggs] a fight,” Deontay said to esnewsreporting.com. “He’s doing all that foolish stuff. It’s foolish to me. I think that’s what he feels is the only way he can get a world title fight. He don’t want to fight to climb the rankings and get up there. He’s talking about how he’s paid his dues. That was years ago, man. You barely got past [Sergey] Liakhovich for the WBO title years ago. Now it’s another era. Now you’ve got to fight your way back to the top and get it the right way. He’s not even ranked anywhere. Going to his gym and all that, to me, it’s ignorance. I understand he wants to fight him bad and feels like this and feels like this is the only way, but it’s not working. If something’s not working, then you’ve got to come up with another plan. I don’t think he deserves it. I don’t think Klitschko’s going to give him a shot.”
Briggs will be in action a little over a week from now on August 23rd against David Long (12-4-2, 8 KOs) at the Ring of Dreams Boxing Gym in Winston-Salem, in North Carolina. This will be Briggs’ fifth fight since his comeback.
If Briggs would start facing lower level top tier contenders, he might get ranked quickly and he could in theory get a title shot against Wladimir within 2 years if he doesn’t retire by then.
