Shannon Briggs on Being a Boxer with Asthma- NY Times article

How did Shannon Briggs, at the age of 35, come to be the lone American standing in their way? Brooklyn, he says, and asthma.

He came up hard in Brownsville. His mother worked and sacrificed to put him through parochial schools, but she became a heroin addict, then got into crack. She was “in and out of institutions” until her death in 1996; his stepfather, Briggs says, “died in prison, but he made me who I am, in some ways. He was a tough guy. My first fight, he made me fight the kid.” Briggs was often on his own, staying with relatives or friends, drifting, out on the street and in charge of himself. “I had a lot of fights. I was an only child, a hard-case kid, in a rough neighborhood. But I always fought my battles.”

When he was 15, he found a copy of a boxing magazine in a Brooklyn subway station. He read it to tatters and went looking for a gym, where his chaotic life began to take on structure. Hopes were high for him when he turned pro in 1992.

Briggs’s professional career, long and mostly victorious though it has been (48-4, with one draw), has not quite borne out his youthful promise. He’s a big hitter with very fast hands, and a deceptively clever tactician, but he has a reputation for wavering in his commitment to training and winning. He acknowledged his critics in his open letter challenging the other champions: “Underachiever. Asthmatic. Excuse-maker and fistic faker. My opponents and some other haters have called me all of those things.”

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