Wladimir Klitschko has no intention of popping out of retirement to battle countryman and fellow Ukrainian icon Oleksandr Usyk.
However the former unified heavyweight champion has contemplated an unlikely return and will have been tempted to field a distinct opponent.
Shannon Briggs, the previous world titlist who has beforehand gleefully taunted Wladimir Klitschko and boxed his elder brother Vitali, helps the elder statesmen of the division coming again.
“There’s no such thing as impossible,” Briggs instructed Sky Sports activities. “As we know mankind has done some amazing things.”
The American admires Klitschko. “He’s such a tough man, to become heavyweight champion and be fighting for your country at war with so many lives being lost. This is a true champion, a true strong man. It’s great for boxing,” Briggs stated.
“I’d like to fight him, no secret about that. Can’t take nothing away from him as a fighter, as a human being. What a guy.”
Boxing comebacks at such a sophisticated age are harmful. However Briggs, who’s even older than Klitschko at 53, now needs to make one himself.
“You can take an old car and you can restore it. You can put in new wheels, new spark plugs, new battery and that car runs like a brand new car. It’s true. That what I feel for myself,” he insisted.
“Anything is possible. You can turn back time.
“Age is not an element.”
But venerable boxing promoter Bob Arum, who steered a 45-year-old George Foreman to becoming the sport’s oldest heavyweight champion, provided a dose of realism.
Oleksandr Usyk celebrates with Wladimir Klitschko (Photograph: Mark Robinson/Matchroom)
“Remember when Foreman came back, it wasn’t 45 when he came back, it was more like 41 and he had already lost to [Evander] Holyfield and he had been tested so he knew where he was. But the idea that Klitschko would now come back at 48, without having interim fights, seems a little out of the question,” Arum instructed Sky Sports activities.
“Seems that way,” he added. “I just don’t know. I’ve always been a great fan of both of the Klitschkos and certainly the Ukrainian people. But I’m not sure.
“It is exhausting for me to imagine that Klitschko can come again and go right into a heavyweight championship battle and not using a sequence of interim fights. It is simply actually exhausting to imagine.”
Briggs’ cause
While his own return to boxing would be controversial, Briggs is also fulfilling another of his dreams – establishing a boxing club with an academy to provide training for other roles in the sport, in the New York neighbourhood of Brownsville.
Briggs is bringing a boxing membership to Brownsville (AP Photograph/Martin Meissner).
“I’ve been motivated to do this since I was a young child, a homeless teenager, who slept in a boxing gym as refuge,” Briggs instructed Sky Sports activities.
“I’m opening up a boxing academy in Brownsville, Brooklyn, the home of myself, Mike Tyson, Riddick Bowe, the great Eddie Mustafa Muhammad, Zab Judah, Danny Jacobs, Curtis Stevens and our new rising star Bruce Carrington.
“If we will have six or seven boxing champions [from Brownsville] which is only one.8 miles in dimension by the way in which, not even half of Hyde Park in England, with 100,000 folks dwelling on this neighbourhood not even two miles in dimension it tells me there have to be one thing within the water. What’s within the water is ache.
“When you have a poverty-stricken neighbourhood with violence and pain, you tend to get people who literally fight their way out of it. Mike Tyson is one of those people. I’m one of those people.”
