"Shannon Briggs vs. Ray Mercer."

I remember seeing some highlights and the finish. Not the most mobile of fights but some really good hard whacks landed by both. Some bad blood between the two.

I believe Mercer was winning the fight.

From what I remember of the finish, the camera angle was a bit unhelpful but I didn't think they were rabbit punches, not behind the head. They didn't even look like all that hard punches either, just the kind of cheap free hits Bruno used to do, but one just landed around Ray's ear or temple and he went down flat.

It was an odd finish, particularly for someone know for durability like Mercer. I think his age, wear & tear and just getting dinged in the right spot by a good hitter did for him, but it was odd.

 

Kind of a weird fight.. I watched it, and I think a prime Mercer might well beat Briggs...

 

I haven't seen the fight in 4 years, so took my assessment with a grain of salt. But what I remember is that Mercer was having his way during almost every round, with Briggs constantly hitting Ray on the back of the head, in the clinches... as he always does. Mercer complained to ref, ref didn't do anything. Then Briggs lands another rabbit punch, Mercer probably thought "**** it, I'm too old to take this" and took the chance of getting a DQ win or a KO loss..... it turned out to be the latter.

Briggs looked older than Mercer, from what I remember.

 

So you want Vitali to take on yet another Non top 30 rated contender?


How about Vitali actually fights a REAL top 5 Ring Magazine opponent.

 

What the hell were you watching?

 

Mercer went down when Briggs started hitting behind the head, went down like a sack of **** and was looking for the ref to award him a DQ win.

Cop outs like that are actually fairly normal for Mercer sadly. He really bitched out in one of his MMA matches as well, took one high kick and was stopped on his feet after literally 15 seconds, rubbing his ear and ****.

 

Late in his career yes but early Mercer had a tons of guts and would walk through tons of punches and never stop coming. The guy always had lazy moments in his career like when he didn't bother to train for the fight with Jesse Ferguson and lost his title shot against Riddick Bowe. But he was not a ***** at all in his Prime.

 

If Haye and Valuev are scared / think its a bad idea to fight Vitali, the show must go on. Vitali is staying active. Its clear he wants to face the best. They avoid a 39 year old fighter. Briggs will at least sign a contract, not back out, and show up.

 

A prime Mercer destroys him ...

 

Went and had a look and it's on Youtube, judge the finish for yourself.

[ame]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BAD6EJJHnj0[/ame]

 

Man, Mercer got his jab going and Briggs looked exhausted, I'm sure Mercer would have won this if it hadn't been for the **** stoppage.

I mean, it wasn't a classic 'rabbit punch' to the back of the head, but you can clearly see that the bigger Briggs turned Mercer around and pushed him against the ropes, and then punched him to the temple while standing behind him... that's definately illegal. A bad, bad stoppage, should've been a DQ win for Mercer..