How Do You Rate Shannon Briggs - On Power?

His power was pretty damn good. But, his conditioning, and Ring IQ left something to be desired. With the one rare exception of Sergei Liakhovich, if Briggs didn't get you out of there in the early rounds, he was likely to run out of steam. All of the fights you mentioned would be fun fights to watch. Most of them 50/50 shootouts.

 

Overrated and not as good as his muscle bound physique would leave one to believe.

 

^This^, and overrated and not as good as his first round knockout percentage would lead one to believe.

 

Second to stop Liakovich, second to stop Mercer, had Botha out on his feet before the bell rang, rocked Lewis, and made Foreman jab instead of trade. He probably had pretty good power.

 

Mike Weaver/Tyson power.

Not a Foreman/Shavers/Wilder/Liston level imo.

 

Maybe not, & I would add Seldon & Rahman level power, not Bruno Morrison (from those above)...
Or Butterbean, Bonecrusher, Ruddock, Tua & a few others.

 

I am going to go against the consensus, and say that he was right up there.

He holds the record for the most first round stoppages, and I get it that you can get any world class heavy a high KO%, by matching them against enough stiffs.

However even tomato cans will often find ways to make it out of the first round.

Look what he did to Liakhovich, after he had just beaten up Lamon Brewster in a war.

Make no mistake Brewster was one of the hardest punchers of that era, if not the hardest.

So yes I think that he had power in buckets, just not very much else.

 

Agree with Janitor. I think Briggs had enormous power and his record bears that out. This guy could really hit. Unfortunately he did not have the best skills and was kind of slow. Worse, his stamina sucked and he could gas easily.

 

I started a thread asking a similar question some time ago and was surprised when a lot of people didn’t think much of it. To be clear. I don’t think Shannon Briggs was a “ great “ fighter, but the man had incredible power. Without putting much thought into it I’m gonna say that he has to be one of the top 10-15 hardest punchers in division history

 

On a night where he brings his best game Briggs could have beaten all those guys. Would it always work out that way ? Not sure

 

Magoo telling it like it is And I agree with him. Briggs is one of those dudes with average skills that will see him probably fail at the top level, but physically he's a danger to anybody and will probably just bull through average opponents on sheer power. It's like his magic trick.

 

Yeah I really don’t understand how whenever a discussion comes up on just ONE attribute of a given fighter, people comment on the failures of his WHOLE career. Was Shannon Briggs a great fighter ? No.. could he hurt you with a punch ? Hell yeah

 

Quotes aren't the end all be all, but I take Lewis' words very seriously. He faced all kinds of heavy hitters and thought Briggs might have been the best he faced for sheer power. It's also notable that if not for the ropes he would've floored Lewis.

In terms of results, he has a staggering number of 1st round KOs and has decent wins over Liakhovich, Mercer (who was past his prime but had incredible toughness). His body shots are no joke and I don't think there's a HW alive or dead who could just shrug off Briggs' body shots.

Hard to say where exactly he'd be on a list, but somewhere between 8-15 is fair. He lacks elite KOs/quality, but the power is very obvious and hard to deny. Skill, timing, accuracy, finishing ability, etc are all completely different things. If we mean raw power Briggs is 100% legit and world class. I'd compare him to guys such as Ruddock, Smith, Whyte, Coetzer, etc, he hit more than hard enough to demand your respect.

 

Ali would although he's about it


He's one of the top 10 hardest hitting HW's ever. Phenomenal power