Boxing Article: Shannon Briggs

Briggs vows ‘to get everything right’

By Norm Frauenheim The Arizona Republic

Options can be dangerous in a place where there aren’t many. Ask Shannon Briggs. He was born amid circumstances where there is only survival. Briggs was good at that, good enough to fight his way into a position that lets him make choices.

There have been movie roles. There is work as a model. In the end, however, there is always that place. Thirty years ago, it was in Mike Tyson’s old neighborhood on the streets of New York’s Brownsville projects. On Nov. 4, it will be in a ring at Chase Field against Sergei Liakhovich.

Briggs is a fighter.

About that and perhaps only that, he’s never had any choice. “This is how it is supposed to be,” said Briggs, who has been training at Roufus Kickboxing and Boxing Center in Tempe. “I was born December 4, 1971. I weighed 3 pounds at birth. My mom had me premature. So here I am now, 270 pounds, 34 years later and about to be 35.

“All my life has been turbulent. Ups and downs. Now, I am going to rectify it. I am going to get everything right. I am going to set the record straight.”

The record is incomplete, or perhaps unfulfilled. Briggs (47-4-1, 41 KOs) was heralded as the next heavyweight champ. He had Tyson’s power but none of the problems. If anybody could pick up the pieces to a shattered heavyweight division, maybe it would be the personable Briggs.

But the pieces, at least those to the American side of the puzzle, continue to scatter. All four major titles belong to fighters from the former Soviet bloc, including Liakhovich, the World Boxing Organization champion who moved to Scottsdale from Belarus.

For Briggs, the shot at Liakhovich’s title is a chance to restore a piece of Americana. It’s been overstated. Then again, everything in promoter’s Don King’s business is.

“I am American, a Black American,” said Briggs, who laughs when his manager, Scott Hirsch of Miami, calls him “The Great Black Hope.”

Briggs’ words are easy to misinterpret. His tone is playful. Briggs, a film buff with a collection of about 3,000 movies, had roles in Transporter 2 and Bad Boys II.

He has been roundly accused of trash talk in news conferences leading up to the Liakhovich fight. But he knows how to deliver a line convincingly enough to at least annoy Liakhovich. He’s a good actor, but it’s the acting and other interests that perhaps have gotten in the way.

“People would say Shannon Briggs is just known for being known,” he said. “What’s wrong with that? It pays the bills. At the same time, I wasn’t ready physically or mature enough.”

Over the years, however, he concedes he wasn’t dedicated to rigors of a trade demanded of him almost at birth. With other interests seemingly in the way, he seemed to have no interest six years ago against somebody named Sedreck Fields. The result was a loss and a reputation.

“Yeah, I have fun,” said Briggs, who now has former Liakhovich cornerman Chuck McGregor, a longtime Valley trainer, with him. “But I didn’t really train. With Chuck, I now think to myself: ‘What was I doing? Was that boxing?’ ”

Briggs has joined McGregor at a point when he says he is finally wise enough to use the soft-spoken trainer’s experience, insight and keen eye for ring tactics.

In his early years, Teddy Atlas trained Briggs. But Briggs said the relationship was undone in part by his own immaturity and taste for life outside the ropes.

“What I knew mostly came from watching television,” said Briggs, who has two sons – 6 months and 9 years old – at his home in Miami. “Look, I’m from a bad neighborhood. We fought all the time. In streets, alleys, hallways.

“But you got to understand there isn’t a gym in Brownsville. You just learn how to fight, however, wherever and whenever.”

For Briggs, that meant brawls, often defending his mom. His stepfather, he said, was in and out of prison and died behind bars in 1993.

His mom, Briggs said, died of a drug overdose in 1996. He said the two of them would often wander the streets, homeless and in search of a place to sleep. After he won a controversial decision over George Foreman in 1997, a graceful Foreman didn’t argue the scoring. Instead, he praised Briggs, saying he’d come a long way from sleeping in cardboard boxes.

Briggs said things were never quite that bad, perhaps because he was too much of a fighter.

“That whole experience is really who I am, it is what has brought me here,” he said.