Try not to weep for too long, fight fans. The highly anticipated heavyweight showdown between a 45 year old Shannon Briggs and a 44 year old Fres Oquendo has been canceled due to Briggs’s drug test failure for elevated testosterone. How will we go on?
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As a fight by itself, this is basically nothing. If two past it former fringe contenders want to battle it out in their forties, more power to them. The problem is that the WBA was sanctioning it for one of its imaginary titles that they try to pass off as a world title. Again, no one would really care except that the WBA often likes to “unify” these belts with their real world title and their real heavyweight titlist is Anthony Joshua. Joshua versus Fres Oquendo is basically the least appealing fight you can make in boxing.
The problem here, however, is that the WBA legally owes Oquendo a shot due to the settlement of a lawsuit he had filed against them. He will still get it, just not against Shannon Briggs. Joshua/Oquendo as a potential future fight still lives.
