Wladimir Klitschko has no intention of coming out of retirement to fight compatriot and Ukrainian icon Oleksandr Usyk.
But the former unified heavyweight champion has been contemplating an unlikely comeback and could have been tempted to box another opponent.
Shannon Briggs, the former world titlist who previously gleefully mocked Wladimir Klitschko and boxed his older brother Vitali, is backing the division’s elder statesmen to make a comeback.
“There is no such thing as impossible,” said Briggs Sky Sports. “Mankind as we know it has done some amazing things.”
The American admires Klitschko. “He’s such a tough man, to become heavyweight champion and fight for your country in a war with so many lives lost. That’s a real champion, a real tough man. It’s great for boxing ,” Briggs said.
“I’d love to fight him, no secret about it. I can’t take anything away from him as a fighter, as a human being. What a guy.”
Returning to boxing at such an advanced age is risky. But Briggs, who is even older than Klitschko at 53, now wants to make one himself.
“You can take an old car and you can restore it. You can put new wheels, new spark plugs, new battery and that car runs like a brand new car. It’s true. That’s how I feel about myself ,” he insisted.
“Anything is possible. You can turn back time.
“Age is no longer a factor.”
But venerable boxing promoter Bob Arum, who guided a 45-year-old George Foreman to become the sport’s oldest heavyweight champion, provided a dose of realism.
Oleksandr Usyk celebrates with Wladimir Klitschko (Photo: Mark Robinson/Matchroom)
“Remember when Foreman came back, he wasn’t 45 when he came back, he 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 said Sky Sports.
“It seems so,” he added. “I just don’t know. I’ve always been a big fan of both Klitschko and of course the Ukrainian people. But I’m not sure.
“It’s hard for me to believe that Klitschko can come back and go to a heavyweight championship fight without a series of interim fights. It’s really hard to believe.”
the cause of Briggs
While his 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 Brownsville neighborhood of New York.
Briggs is bringing a boxing club to Brownsville (AP Photo/Martin Meissner).
“I’ve been motivated to do this since I was a little kid, a homeless teenager, sleeping in a boxing gym as a shelter,” Briggs said. Sky Sports.
“I’m opening a boxing academy in Brownsville, Brooklyn, home of myself, Mike Tyson, Riddick Bowe, the great Eddie Mustafa Muhammad, Zab Judah, Danny Jacobs, Curtis Stevens and our new star Bruce Carrington.
“If we can have six or seven boxing champions (from Brownsville) which is only 1.8 miles in size, it’s not even half the size of Hyde Park in England, with 100,000 people living in this neighborhood not even two miles in size, he tells me. there must be something in the water What is in the water is pain.
“When you have a poverty-stricken neighborhood with violence and pain, you tend to get people who are literally fighting their way out of it. Mike Tyson is one of those people. I’m one of those people.”
