Maybe a pay-per-view boxing match priced to move at $29.95 -- a discount compared to the extortionate price tags for the really big bouts -- means only one of the two boxers is required to fight. Shannon Briggs walked through his title defense, in Atlantic City on Saturday night, as if he were waiting for somebody to show up to fight challenger Sultan Ibragimov. Nobody did. Ibragimov pecked on the 272-pound Briggs enough to become the latest WBO heavyweight champ (everyone gets a turn).
Announcers Barry Tompkins and Al Bernstein made the best of the slow-paced, near shutout win by Ibragimov. Bernstein said that Briggs trainer Yoel Judah, trying to show Briggs what to do, threw more punches between rounds than Briggs did during the fight. Keith Idec of the Herald News makes the same observation in his Sunday morning report (Sluggish Briggs loses boxing title). Franklin McNeil in the Newark Star-Ledger (Ibragimov stays on target to take title) leads his dispatch with Ibragimov. Dan Rafael's report from the scene, on ESPN.com, covers most of the undercard. The website's main boxing page used an awesome headline for the fight: "Sultan of Swing." You know somebody was just waiting to unfurl that one. Seems like most Sunday papers, to handle the fight, ran an AP story by Barry Wilner.
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