.....YOUR NEW HEAVYWEIGHT CHAMPION OF THE WORLD: SOME RUSSIAN DUDE WHO BEAT UP ON A SICKLY GUY!!

The real Sultan of swing (LOL! LMAO! LMFAO!).
First, I need to point out that the caption below this photograph is meant to be sarcastic and is only meant to reference the headlines found here, here and here. I don't use the text acronyms and that fact is important enough to me that no one (even people I don't know) believes that I do use them that I feel the need to make it clear before I begin this post even though you could probably tell anyway.

Anyhoo, Saturday night, in what is another in a long line of ridiculous chain of events for Boxing's premiere weight class, the WBO Heavyweight Championship fight featured the undefeated and very talented Sultan Ibragimov beating up on a fat kid. Ibragimov absolutely beat the shit out of the asthmatic and not exactly in the best shape of his life, Shannon Briggs, to win the WBO Heavyweight Champion. It was evident that Briggs was just looking to get paid the $1.8 million and hoping he could land a knock out punch:

He [Briggs] weighed in at a very high 273-pounds for the bout, which Briggs claims is the result of asthma medicine complicating his training camp. Briggs said that he was hurting so bad from asthma medication that he wanted to pull out of the fight.

"I was hurting," Briggs said. "And he was running. He kept running. I proved that someone with asthma can become heavyweight champion twice. For two weeks I couldn't train. I was taking all kinds of antibiotics. I didn't want to fight but they made me fight."

What's a shame about the fight is not only that no one watched it or cared about it, but Ibragimov is a good fighter and has kind of an "it" quality about his boxing style that people should be excited about but the match-up with Briggs delegitamized the whole event. I was watching MSG last week and they showed his fight against Javier Mora in March (Mora was a late replacement for Briggs after Briggs bailed due to "pneumonia") and Ibragimov just annihilated him in 40 some seconds. Mora, while not a heavyweight contender necessarily, is no chump and he came out of that fight looking like he had withstood a 15 round war, collapsing outside of the ring. MSG also broadcast his fight with Al Cole, a fight in which Cole was dispatched in about 3 rounds and never had a chance. Ibragimov is not big (6'2", 215lbs), he's not particularly brash but the way he fights reminds me of Tyson with a little better technical skill and stamina (he's and he's actually being "coached" by Tyson). He's a former silver medalist from the 2000 Olympics, so he comes with a pedigree of technical skill but he's got HUGE punching power. He murders you on the inside and has a lethal upper cut. His fights are exciting to watch because he can hit like Tyson but he can take shots and he's much quicker than most guys in his weight class. He's going to present a ton of problems to opponents from here on out and the next time he fights I will make a point to watch. Hopefully next tiem they can pick an opponent who doesn't have a wheezing fit after the 3rd round.