Family first for Paul Briggs.

Family first for Team Briggs

THE softly spoken words from his seven-year-old son shook Paul Briggs more than any blow in his almost 100 fights.
"Dad, I never want you to fight again," Isaiah pleaded.
There was was silence, broken only by the waves crashing against the front of the barge.
"It was one of those defining moments in life," Paul `Hurricane' Briggs recounted yesterday.
"It was such a beautiful day. Isaiah and I were sitting out the front of the barge as we travelled back from a camping holiday on Moreton Island last November.
"(Wife) Tash and (daughter) Aramea were inside the barge and my son and I were just soaking up the atmosphere.
"Out of the blue he just told me he didn't want me to fight any more. When I asked him `why?', he simply replied `Because I am sick of seeing you get hurt'."
That moment still sits vividly at the front of Briggs' mind.
One of Australia's most successful boxers of the past decade is at the crossroads. There is even a chance he has already taken the off-ramp leaving the fight game, with all its highs and lows, behind.
Briggs doesn't know. Only time will decide.
He says he hasn't retired, but almost every thought he verbalises says he has.
"My family is my focus now, my number one focus," he says.
"The way my relationship with my son has changed and grown in recent times is incredible. Not a truckload of world title belts would match that. I am a different man. I love peace and stability, home life. That is so different to what I used to be.
"The focus in my life is no longer to bash another man's brains in, and for eight weeks leading up to every fight that was my focus."
Although the full puzzle is yet to be revealed, the pieces of Briggs exit from the fight game have been falling into place for more than a year.
It started small, a frustrating sensation that he had a pebble in his shoe. But no matter how many times he checked his sock and his footwear -- no pebble.
His last ring assignment, an easy 12-round points win over South African Rupert van Aswegen in February, `07, was to have been a warm-up to a big year for Briggs.
But by mid-year the pebble had become a boulder.
"I knew something was wrong with me, but didn't know what," he says.
"Around the middle of the year I was sparring. I came out of the corner jabbing, but wasn't hitting anything.
"I looked up and my sparring partner was miles away across the ring with his gloves down just looking at me.
"(Trainer) Johnny Lewis suggested that I go for a check-up."
What followed was months of frustration as Briggs underwent almost every form of medical examination. And the symptoms only worsened.
His vision was drastically impaired, he had severe dizzy spells, his entire body was ultra sensitive. Most frustrating was the lack of answers. There were early fears, later dispelled, that he had a brain tumour.
Finally the penny dropped. A naturopath diagnosed damage to his nervous and adrenaline systems.
The cause: almost 20 years of living a fight or flight lifestyle in and outside the ring. ("I was like a soldier involved in a non-stop war for 20 years," he explains.)
The cure: Lots of rest, slowly nurturing his body back to full health.
The boxing career was put on hold, he and his young family returned to the Gold Coast and Briggs took his first glimpse at life post-boxing.
"I decided to get on with life and new challenges and just three weeks ago started a personal training business that targets the high end corporates," he says.
"I am a qualified personal trainer and for years have trained at the elite level with the best in the world.
"So Team Briggs was formed and is really booming."
The more Briggs talks the more he sounds like someone getting used to the idea that he will never fight again.
"A boxer can become old in one fight," he says.
"You can go from being fit and virile to past it in one fight. And once that decline starts ... Maybe it is time for me. I have had a lot of fights, a lot of hard fights. My number one goal in boxing was to leave the ring with my assets.
"To still be articulate. To still be able to think sharply about things. To exit safely." The biggest indicator that Briggs will not fight again is that even he admits that there is a part of him that is gone.
That piece, now missing, makes him a better man, but less a fighter. "It's that piece that kicks in during a fight in the championship rounds (rounds 10-12)," he says.
"It's that person inside you that kicks in when you are tired, when you are hurting and says 'I don't care if I lose this, but I am taking you down with me'."
Briggs says if he does walk away it will be without regret, despite twice being a close points decision away from a world title.
The boxing game has been tough on him physically and emotionally. His family has also had to pay a price.
"I think my wife said it perfectly when she described how I was leading up to a fight," he says.
"She said it was not what I said, or that I was moody. `It is the unsaid things', she explained. `What you give off is scary and not nice to be around'.
'For those eight weeks I am the man focusing on tearing another man apart. That's not really compatible with a family picnic."
But just when you think you have a bead on Briggs, that 'The Hurricane' has blown out, he smiles, and the warrior within emerges.
"The trouble is that I am a walking contradiction," he admits.
"I truly believe I have one fight left in me, one big fight, my best fight and that fight is Danny Green.
"Forget the Mundine-Green farce. This would be a real fight. Green and I would stand on each other's toes and bite the other's face off.
"We have sparred a lot together and even our sparring sessions are wars -- ruptured muscles and broken bones. We just stand there punching each other and yelling at each other.
"Danny knows that I am the hardest puncher he has ever stood in front of."
But no sooner does the warrior emerge then he disappears.
He smiles again and his clear eyes twinkle through his glasses.
"I had my crack and life is what it is," says Briggs.
"I put my head on my pillow at night with no regrets. I will know in my golden years that whatever I did I gave it 100 per cent."

 

No problem.

Paul is a great boxer, and I'll always be a fan.He will always be rememebred for his wars with Adamek. Great fights.

 

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Go Paul Briggs!

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