Ibragimov defeats Briggs for WBO title
Sultan Ibragimov turned out to be the latest Red Menace, and for the second time in less than a year, American heavyweights are once again on the outside looking in.
Ibragimov’s unanimous decision over Shannon Briggs in Saturday night’s WBO title fight at Boardwalk Hall allowed the Sultan to join three other former Soviet-bloc heavyweights – Wladimir Klitschko, Oleg Maskaev, and Rusian Chagaev – who already owned championships.
The only difference this time is that Ibragimov didn’t even have to work very hard to earn his.
Briggs had broken through the Iron Curtain with a 12th-round knockout of Sergei Lyakhovich last November, and even though he was never in this one after the first round, his supporters in the audience were once again holding out hope for some last-minute magic, but this time it wasn’t there.
Briggs, who barely put up a struggle in surrendering his title, blamed his asthma, and granted, he did appear to be gasping for air from the fourth round on, but the 273 pounds he carried into the ring Saturday night didn’t help, either.
Some will say that Briggs actually lost his title at the weigh-in, but we’re inclined to blame those three New York press conferences leading up to this fight. Whether it was the Beef Stroganoff at the Russian joint, the Paella at the Copa, or the T-bone Steak at Gallagher’s last Wednesday, the extra meals could more than account for the fact that Briggs was five pounds heavier than when he dethroned the White Wolf last fall, and 46 more than when he won his controversial split decision over George Foreman in the same venue ten years earlier.
“I had to do what I had to do,” Briggs sighed apologetically. “I was hurting, and he was running.”
When both the winner and the loser are apologizing afterward, you can probably assume that it was a disappointing fight, and this one was. Briggs was lucky he didn’t get dizzy and fall down, since he spent approximately 90 per cent of the evening rooted to the center of the ring, spinning slowly around in circles as Ibragimov waltzed around him, occasionally darting in to land a straight left before quickly retreating back out of harm’s way to resume the monotonous mating dance.
Although Briggs, with the advantage of the extra fifty pounds he was packing, clearly had the edge in power, he was strangely unwilling to charge through the Sultan’s defenses in order to mix it up. On the rare instance he did he managed rock Ibragimov with a couple of good left hook-right hand combinations.
For his part, Ibragimov was a virtually one-handed fighter. Although he maintained his right as his lead hand from his southpaw stance, he might as well have been holding a featherduster in his right glove. He pawed at Briggs with the right, by there were no hooks, no jabs. He’d just stick it out there as if to annoy Briggs, and then throw the left if he got close enough, and while Briggs never appeared to be seriously hurt by Ibragimov’s business hand, there were enough of them over the course of the night to allow the Russian to run away with the issue on the scorecards.
Briggs probably set the tone for the night with the first punch he threw, a sweeping roundhouse right. Ibragimov ducked, and the punch sailed harmlessy past, missing by a good six inches. Fortunately for Shannon, with the Pay-per-view independently produced, CompuBox was sitting this one out, because unless we badly miss our guess, Briggs probably set a new divisional low for punches thrown by a heavyweight champion in a 12-round fight.
Lynn Carter scored it 119-109, Don Trella 117-111, and Luis Rivera 115-113 for the Russian. The Boxingtalk scorecard had Ibragimov winning 118-110.
“I proved someone with asthma can become the heavyweight champion – twice,” said Briggs, who said that his affliction, treated by antiobiotics, had forced him to stop training for two weeks in the run-up to this one. (A scheduled March meeting with Ibragimov, you may recall, had to be postponed when Briggs was felled by pneumonia.)
Briggs said he went through with Saturday’s fight only to keep from being stripped of the title he had won last November.
“I didn’t want to fight,” said Briggs, “but they made me fight.”
Ibragimov, while happy enough with his new belt, seemed almost embarrassed by the way he won it.
“I don’t like that kind of fight,” he said. “I don’t like to fight that way. But Shannon Briggs is a tough guy. I had to be careful and respect his power.”
Hometowner Shamone Alvarez won the vacant NABO welterweight title with a unanimous decision over rugged Mexican Jose Luis Cruz. There were no knockdowns, unless one counts Cruz’ open-field tackle in the fifth. Referee Harvey Dock took points from Cruz for low blows in both the fourth and seventh rounds. Dock also called time to have Cruz examined after a ninth-round collision of heads, but no blame was assessed. Judge Hilton Whitaker had Alvarez way out front at 119-108, while John Riley scored it 117-109 and Larry Layton 116-110.
Alvarez improved to 18-0, while Cruz suffered his third loss (the others were to Sharmba Mitchell and Shane Mosely) in falling to 32-3-2.
Fighting for the first time since being stopped by Alejandro Berrio in an IBF super-middleweight title bout in March, German light-heavyweight Robert Stieglitz outpointed New Jersey veteran Marlon Hayes over eight rounds. Pierre Benoist had Stieglitz winning 79-73, while Barbara Perez and Robert Grasso both scored it 77-75. Stieglitz is now 30-1, while Hayes, losing for the sixth time in his last seven fights, dropped to 23-7.
Giovanni Lorenzo wasn’t even tested in his third-round TKO of an overmatched Bruce (The Rage) Rubmloz. In the first round Rumbloz apparently tried to take a knee, but didn’t get down quite far enough to suit referee Mike Ortega. Ortega ordered Lorenzo to keep boxing, and Giovanni complied, wading in to drop the opponent and make the knockdown official.
The Rage went down twice more in the third, first from a right to the back of the head as he tried to run away from Lorenzo, and shortly thereafter from a hard left hook to the body. Following a mandatory eight-count, Lorenzo moved in to land two more body shots, and as Rumbloz sagged against the ropes, Ortega waved the fight off at 2:40 of the round. Lorenzo remains unbeaten at 24-0.
Russian junior welter Habib Alakhverdiev got his fourth win in as many pro outings when referee Lindsay Page disqualified opponent Robert Acevedo (1-2-1) for holding with 12 seconds remaining in their foul-plagued contest. Page had already penalized both boxers for head-butts – Acevedo in the third and Alakhverdiev for a clumsy attempt at retribution in the fourth. Since Alakhverdiev led 29-28 on all three cards going into the last round and had already been docked a point, the timing of the seemingly precipitate DQ probably could have been better.
Former Philadelphia amateur standout Tiger Allen outweighs his identical twin brother, junior welterweight Rock Allen, by nearly 40 pounds these days, but apparently packs the same punch. Tiger (3-0) floored Fitzgerald Johnson (1-1) twice in the third round of their scheduled four-round prelim before Steve Smoger stopped it at 2:16 of the third.
Earlier, San Antonio flyweight Raul Martinez improved to 19-0 with a unanimous decision over well-traveled Mexican Alejandro Moreno, now 21-22-3. Grasso and Benoist scored it a shutout for Martinez at 60-54, while Perez had it 58-56.
In the walk-out bout, former heavyweight challenger Calvin (The Boxing Banker) Brock won a unanimous decision over Puerto Rican Alex Gonzales.
* * *
BOARDWALK HALL
ATLANTIC CITY, N.J.
JUNE 2, 2007
HEAVYWEIGHTS: Sultan Ibragimov, 221, Rostov-na-Donu, Russia dec. Shannon Briggs, 273, Brooklyn, N.Y. (12) (Wins WBO title)
Calvin Brock, 236, Charlotte, N.C. dec. Alex Gonzalez, 230, Vega Baja, Puerto Rico (8)
LIGHT HEAVYWEIGHTS: Robert Stieglitz, 173, Magdeburg, Germany dec. Marlon Hayes, 179, Newark, N.J. (8)
Tiger Allen, 178, Philadelphia, Penn. TKO’d Fitzgerald Johnson, 175, Ashboro, N.C. (3)
SUPER MIDDLEWEIGHTS: Giovanni Lorenzo, 161 1/2, Jeringa, D.R. TKO’d Bruce Rumbloz, 162, Sterling, Ill. (3)
WELTERWEIGHTS: Shamone Alvarez, 146, Atlantic City, N.J. dec. Jose Luis Cruz, 146, Mazatlan, Mexico (12)
JUNIOR WELTERS: Khabib Alakhverdiev, 140, Kurush, Russia DQ over Roberto Acevado, 141, Aguadilla, P.R. (4)
FLYWEIGHTS: Raul Martinez, 114, San Antonio, Tex. dec. Alejandro Moreno, 112, Ciudad Juarez, Mexico (6)
M
Send questions and comments to: gkimball@boxingtalk.com
