Another Soulless Klitschko Night As Brave But Overmatched Shannon Briggs Takes A Shellacking
Throughout the rather painful forty seven minutes I spent watching Vitali Klitschko repetitively bopping Shannon Briggs in the head last night, my mind tried to desert me and escape someplace else as so often happens when this family entertain. My perfidious grey matter squealed and took flight, much as it attempts to when confronted with Tony Soprano, Robbie Williams or the concept of hedge funds; I can try to accept all of these things into my world as much as I like but in the end all I’m left with is a migraine.
So as the picture continued to flicker before me I drifted off and began to ponder a more important argument than the one playing out on my monitor: just which one of these tyrannical brothers is the harder guy to watch fight?
Vitali and Wladimir appear as two halves of one great fighter with neither quite qualifying under their own steam. Vitali possesses the grit and the devil missing from his brother’s makeup, whilst Wladimir sports the technical skills his sibling so obviously lacks. As a duo they dominate the most pitiful of heavyweight landscapes, yet as performers they fill me with the type of dread visited upon Garth Algar when someone name-drops Kenny G.
Briggs brought nothing with him to the bartering circle last night apart from a misplaced defiance. Overripe, overstuffed and in over his head, he approached his doom with a hangdog look that suggested an ignorance to sauerkraut’s laxative properties. After some theatrical bluff and bluster at the weigh in, he now resembled an sad amalgamation of Moses Hightower and Ming the Merciless, a pitiful caricature of the fast handed Brooklyn bomber who had at one time seemed predestined for greatness.
Klitschko of course was all business. With an inherited discipline that leaves him impervious to overconfidence, he refused to treat Briggs as anything other than a momentous challenge, which would be laughable if any of this crap was actually funny.
And here’s the thing, the vast German audience didn’t seem to care that they were being ripped off. They didn’t appear to mind the one sided nature of the contest, rather they were just happy to be there to see one of half of their heroic double act systematically offing another poorly prepared title challenger. Vitali remember, was a 30-1 on favourite to win here with with some sports books.
After a ridiculous and excruciating fanfare the bout played out as expected. Briggs barely managed to throw a punch and instead took a wince inducing battering which left him in intensive care, his once handsome mug fractured in multiple spots. It was an awful thing to sit through.
Harking back a month I was left similarly turned off after watching Wladimir jab and grab the bejesus out of Sam Peter, ten rounds of tedium which made me want to bite my own tongue to see if I was still conscious. Was that worse than this I ask myself?
When faced with such poor fare it would serve the brothers well to terminate matters as quickly as possible. Methodically stripping such a poor class of opponent to the bare bones before looking to end the argument makes for an unedifying spectacle. Where is the soul in such a recital?
And whilst I like Vitali’s mean spirited attitude to the job I detest his technique. He fights like a Woodstock refugee on stilts, swaying hither and thither like a poplar tree in the Siberian winds. Alternatively, whilst I appreciate the correct punching and the power of young Wladimir, his pusillanimous approach leaves me frigid. He is the very definition of the reluctant warrior.
Yet who can one turn to in hope for an end to this morbid monopoly? David Haye, a man who barks about Dereck Chisora’s credentials whilst simutaneously flogging a bout against Audley Harrison? Tomasz Adamek, a former light heavyweight who despite having nuts and guts in abundance managed to struggle with the desultory Jason Estrada?
Forget it; this division belongs to the Klitschko family for as long as they want it and for those of us who can’t bear to watch then I guess there’s always hedge funds.
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