1.01.07 – By Michael Marley, BoxingConfidential.com: As you can see from Machine Gun Marty Rosengarten’s classic photo (circa 1999), there is a New Sheriff in the heavyweight house. His name is Shannon Briggs and the never shy Brooklyn lad shared his 2007 New Year’s Resolutions with boxingconfidential.com.
1. I wish, I wish, I could order the other champs out of town by sundown. Unfortunately, that is not in my powers so I resolve do the next best thing moving forward. I do warn all the other champs that, if they climb into the ring with me, they are entering Tombstone Territory and I am Doc Holliday.
2. I resolve to clock Klitschko. I will hit Wlad, who I respect in and out of the boxing ring, so many times he will think someone implanted a cuckoo clock in his cranium. Manny Steward knows what time it is in that bout.
3. I hereby resolve and promise, first things first, to give a straight up beat down to Iggy, meaning Sultan Ibragimov, when he dares to challenge me for my WBO diadem on March 10. He will know he’s in Madison Square Garden, the House That Briggs Is Building. They called Babe Ruth the “Sultan Of Swat.’ When I get done getting jiggy with Iggy, he will be called the Sultan Who Got Swatted..
4. Who’s up next in Shannon’s Brownsville Barbershop, where my motto is I Cut Heads?
If Klitschko is not ready and willing, I will dance with the Pugilistic Pachyderm, Nickolay Valuev, or if he gets beat, my old rival Jameel McCline. I owe Jammel something and Valuev I would love to mount, I mean fight because of the physical challenge of fighting a guy who is so big he gets his mail in three different zip codes.
5. While I love the Garden because it is home for a Brooklyn homie, perhaps Oleg Maskaev, the WBC champ, and I could hook up in a ballpark brawl, either at Shea or Yankee Stadium. What might be even more perfect and fitting, since I’m from Crooklyn and Oleg used to live in Staten Island, might be the Coney Island jewel of a ballpark where they have had boxing before.
6. Away from the ring, to see what I can do represent all the asthmatic kids, especially in the poor neighborhoods, those kids who are falsely told they cannot be athletes or cannot be successful in life in any field because of their illness. I’d love to be a spokesperson for an organization which helps young asthmatics. If may have wheezed but it was Sergei Liakhovich who inhaled my title-winning knockout punches. Go to the inner cities and you find asthma rates which are astonishingly high.
7. Getting back to Doc Holliday, the gunslinger, I say to the other champions, “I’m Shannon Briggs, I’m your huckleberry. I think my promoter, Don King, will line them all up.
Side note: Shannon wants his radio pals, Howard Stern and Robin Quivers and Boy Gary to know he’s ready to come back on the Sternfest any time and he’s bringing his gaudy belt which has untold jewels, diamonds and rubies on it.