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September 1999
Each month we bring you a selection of articles from the current and past issues of BOXING MONTHLY. To buy the magazine, see our subscription or back issues pages, or use our world distribution map to find a news-stand copy. Why not use our Interactive Forum to express your own boxing comments and opinions!
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GULF DRAW
STEVE FARHOOD tries to make head or tail of the careers of Shannon Briggs and Frans Botha, the heavyweight nearly men whose draw further complicated the picture. |
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BUFFALO BITES BACK: following Briggs's alarming fade, Botha (right) seized
the initiative and would almost certainly have won in a 12-rounder
- Get Big Pic For
Shannon Briggs, it's seemingly been an inconsequential detail that
he has failed to forcefully crack the Top 10, much less win a world
title. Ever since turning pro in 1992, the hip-hop heavyweight has been
walking and talking as if he were a unified titlist. Yet he's never
realised his potential, suffering knockout losses to Darroll Wilson and
Lennox Lewis and capturing an unpopular decision over George Foreman.
All he's ever won is the affection of the media. Hey, good copy is good
copy, and besides, Briggs is decidedly likeable.
Briggs is now 27, and after his entertaining 10-round draw vs. Frans
Botha at the Trump Taj Mahal in Atlantic City on 7 August, it's time to
wonder whether we've overrated that potential all along.
In the gym where he developed into a top amateur, Briggs called
himself "Ali", but he's never fought like "The Greatest". He's been
magnificently marketed and has landed work as a model and actor. He owns
a couple of Mercs and employs a personal cook. Hell, his agent, Marc
Roberts, even sells stock in the fighter; Worldwide Entertainment, which
manages Briggs, is publicly traded. It's all enough to make you wonder
if, as first suggested by Teddy Atlas, who used to train the
heavyweight, Briggs isn't already satisfied.
The dreadlocked Briggs sure seemed content after dropping and almost
stopping Botha in round eight. He virtually ceased and desisted, blowing
a three-point lead on two of the cards with two rounds to go. This time,
the excuse wasn't asthma (the Wilson fight) or sensitivity to criticism
(the Lewis fight), but rather ring rust. Briggs blew a chance to
convincingly defeat a Top 20 calibre opponent. Instead, Botha, a
heavyweight who can't seem to secure respect, was the winner in the draw
against a fighter who has been respected far too much.
For Briggs, the gap between fame and greatness has never seemed wider. Briggs-Botha
was a pay-per-view headliner largely because promoters knew
the fighters could and would sell themselves. Based on the respective
records and ratings of the heavyweights, the bout was relatively
insignificant. Briggs had fought well - for a round - before falling at
the feet of Lewis, and Botha was coming off a one-punch knockout defeat
at the hands of Mike Tyson. As one scribe put it: ". . . this is an
elimination fight for two guys who already have been eliminated."
Promoter Frank Warren presented a rosier outlook: "The winner has a
great future in front of him. The loser has nowhere to go."
The "great future" had been reserved for Briggs, who was being
pencilled in for a shot at Tyson in December. This put the New Yorker in
a precarious position: He had to win in order to keep his standing, but
if he demolished Botha, Tyson's connections were likely to search for an
easier touch. Tricky is the politics of big-time boxing.
While both heavyweights trained in earnest in Big Bear, California,
the lack of familiar faces had to be unsettling. Botha had traded
trainer Panama Lewis for Abel Sanchez and was estranged from longtime
manager Sterling McPherson. As for Briggs, it was his first major fight
under the tutelage of big-man miracle worker Emanuel Steward.
The state-of-the-art trash-talking, however, suggested supreme
confidence.
"You're too slow, you have no power, you don't move your head," Briggs
told Botha at the final press conference. "You fought bums your whole
career.
"Everybody's talking about how well you did, but Mike Tyson's a shot
fighter. He's not the Mike Tyson of old, but you still should have been
happy to go five rounds. The only punch he landed, he knocked you out."
It was Botha's turn when Briggs said the South African represented "a
good comeback fight for me".
"It's more like a good going-away fight," Botha said.
Actually, Botha didn't need to fire too many verbal volleys. Briggs's
own trainer, of all people, was doing it for him. "I don't think Botha
respects [Briggs] in any area," Steward told the New York Daily News.
"Talent, stamina, desire to win, he rates Shannon Briggs very low. Botha
doesn't think Shannon has much heart. He believes Shannon's a
happy-go-lucky kid who'll run out of gas after five, six rounds, who'll
quit if you brawl with him and intimidate him."
The bettors had a different view. In Las Vegas, Briggs opened as a 2-1
favourite. By fight time, he had been bet up to 3-1. The
opening bell sounded at 11:09 p.m., and Briggs, 230lbs (16st 6lbs),
from Brooklyn, New York, snapped his first jab seconds later. He added a
few straight rights as well, inching forward and capitalising on Botha's
curiously low guard. After two rounds, the favourite, armed with a
seven-inch reach advantage, looked every bit the dominant boxer. Too bad
the New York Stock Exchange was closed for the weekend.
Botha, 232lbs, from Witibank, South Africa, entered the fray in the
third. As had been the case in the Tyson fight, he was energised by his
achievement, and his body language instantly changed. Botha is never
beautiful, but when he's confidently winging his overhand right, the
adverbs and adjectives change from painfully slow to awkwardly
effective. By the round's end, he was initiating the action. He carried
the fourth as well to draw even on two of the cards.
What surprised Botha was the source of his success. Tape of Briggs had
indicated that the heavyweight tucked his chin behind his left shoulder,
all but eliminating his opponent's right. But the right was all that
Botha landed.
"Me and Abel worked so hard on the left hook in camp," Botha said,
"and I couldn't get it off. All I had seen with Darroll Wilson and
Lennox was the left hook and I thought I'd land it. But my timing was
off and I struggled putting punches together."
If a good fight features at least a couple of changes in momentum,
Briggs-Botha qualified without question. Briggs, 31-2-1 (25 KOs),
re-established his hand speed in the fifth and especially the sixth,
rattling Botha, 39-2-1 (24 KOs), with one-twos. While the fifth was a
close round, Briggs shone in the sixth, snapping back Botha's head with
jabs and forcing "The White Buffalo" to cover up by raking him with
rights. There was precious little counterpunching; the fighter who fired
first controlled the action.
"When a guy throws a punch, even if he misses, he'll keep throwing it
if you don't hit him back," said Steward.
Until round seven, Briggs-Botha was a competitive, albeit
unexceptional, battle. It was the last four rounds that made it the best
heavyweight fight of the year to date. Early in the seventh, Botha
suddenly strung together a series of punches - right, right to body,
three rights upstairs, a jab and two more rights, two rights to the
body, and a right uppercut. Bleeding from a cut at the corner of his
left brow, Briggs backed to the ropes and clinched. Botha punctuated his
work with one last right, convincing one of the judges (Joseph Pasquale)
to score the round 10-8.
So what happened next? Back came Briggs in the eighth, of course,
stunning Botha with a long left hook late in the stanza. A follow-up
right and hook downed Botha along the ropes. There was little time to
finish, but Briggs added a right-left-right-left and a thunderous hook.
Botha stumbled to his stool with a cut over his left eye and what looked
like a lipstick mark on his forehead, the result of an unintentional
butt. If nothing else, he had gutted away the rockiest patch of the
fight, proving Tyson hadn't ruined him after all.
"I thought he'd be out from the knockdown, but he wasn't," said
Briggs. "He was a very cagey fighter."
Botha retreated at the start of the ninth, but only until he found the
strength to hammer Briggs with yet another right. That blow turned the
fight once more, and Briggs took a one-way beating for the next five
minutes. He resembled a mugging victim in the 10th, when Botha wouldn't
have missed with his right if blindfolded. At the final gong, Briggs was
pouring blood from the cut over his left eye and a gash on his left ear.
"I just didn't have enough time," said Botha. "If this was a 12-round
fight, I know it would've been over."
All three judges scored the final round 10-8, securing Botha a
majority draw. Pasquale favoured The White Buffalo by 95-92, but Eugene
Grant and John Stewart both scored 94-94. Boxing Monthly had Briggs in
front by 95-94. The majority of the ringside press saw Botha the winner
by a point or two.
"I saw him fishing [in Big Bear], I saw him go to Burger King once,
and I thought he was taking me lightly," Briggs said of Botha. "I guess
he was working on his right hand."
Briggs thought the draw a fair verdict. (There's that theme of
satisfaction again.) He was voicing only mild displeasure of his
performance when Steward jumped in.
"I thought he fought a very bad fight," said the trainer. "He was too
hesitant. All the other guy was doing was throwing a one-two. Shannon
got in front of Botha and let him punch first. He didn't use his jab
enough. He let Botha dictate the fight, let him do the same thing over
and over. He took a tremendous amount of punches in the last two rounds.
Those punches didn't do anyone any good."
For his part, Botha was terribly discouraged.
"[Michael] Moorer, Tyson, Briggs - something always goes wrong," he
said. "Everything I do, the Buffalo can't win." Heavyweights
are mercurial by nature, so there's no point predicting
Briggs's future. Maybe he'll secure that date with Tyson, but even if he
scores a sensational knockout in The Battle of Brooklyn, what would it
really mean? After all, he's repeatedly described Tyson as a shot
fighter.
Boxing fans are suckers for an attractive heavyweight, so we'll keep
watching and waiting for that moment of blinding light that may never
come. At least Briggs didn't lose to Botha. "If I lost," Briggs
revealed, "I had to go on Howard Stern [a syndicated radio and
television show] bone-naked with a dunce cap on while he threw baloney
at me."
Over-exposure can sure be a bitch. When
Briggs-Botha was first announced, I had every intention of
attending solely because of the chief support, WBO junior featherweight
champion Marco Antonio Barrera vs. powerpunching contender Angel
Vazquez. That would've been a beauty. But Vazquez fell out, and his
replacement, Pastor "Mad Cow" Maurin, made for one of the worst
lighter-weight fights I've seen in years. Barrera scored a near-shutout
over 12 rounds.
In compiling an eye-popping record of 42-1 (23 KOs), the 30-year-old
Maurin had fought only in his native Argentina. Suffice to say he won't
be invited back to the States. Repeatedly switching from orthodox to
southpaw, the challenger moved laterally while in a defensive shell.
When he punched, he did so suddenly, frantically, and with the balance
and technique of a soused sailor. When the subject of a return was
broached at the post-fight press conference, Frank Warren, who promoted
along with Bernie Dillon, was quick to declare: "There will not be a
rematch." Good man, that Frank.
Mexico's Barrera, 49-2 (36 KOs), did the best he could, mixing his
attack to the head and body. He suffered a minor cut on the right side
of his face in round four, but never lost his composure. If Maurin was
frustrating him, he never let on.
Maurin won the sixth round on one card and the 12th on another. Harry
Davis (Canada) scored 120-108 and John Poturaj (USA) and Roberto Ramirez
(Puerto Rico) 119-109.
Barrera may clash with WBC super bantamweight champion and countryman
Erik Morales before the year is out. Even if he loses, he'll find
Morales easier to deal with than Maurin.
Leading off the pay-per-view portion of the card was super
middleweight contender Omar Sheika, who stopped the faded but brave
Kevin Pompey in round eight. Sheika, 18-1 (13 KOs), floored and almost
halted his stubborn opponent in round two, but referee Tony Orlando
chose not to pull the plug. When the third man did intervene in the
eighth, Pompey and a good portion of the crowd thought him premature.
After seven rounds, Sheika led by scores of 67-64, 67-65, and 68-63.
Sheika called for a shot at WBO champion Joe Calzaghe. The
Palestinian's one career loss came in England, vs. journeyman Tony Booth
in 1998. |
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