Sorry, boys and girls. We’ve been thwarted.
Shannon Briggs and Fres Oquendo won’t need a second purse bid for their WBA title fight after all, as the two sides have come to an agreement on the last day before their extended deadline. The Heavyweight Factory, whose $400,000 bid was the only offer during the first bid, will promote the fight, which does not yet have a location.
The WBA currently has Briggs and Oquendo ranked #4 and #5 behind Luis Ortiz, Wladimir Klitschko, and Alexander Ustinov. Neither man has officially beaten a quality heavyweight in over a decade.
Dan Rafael puts it better than I do:
It likely will be a very hard sell. Briggs (60-6-1, 53 KOs), 45, a former two-time world titleholder from Brooklyn, New York, and Oquendo (37-8, 24 KOs), 43, of Chicago, are many years past their primes, and the fight that has stoked virtually no interest. No American TV network has interest in the fight, and fan interest is essentially nonexistent. Further, the WBA's top title is vacant, but Anthony Joshua and Wladimir Klitschko will be fighting for it, as well as Joshua's IBF title, when they meet on April 29 before a sold-out crowd of 90,000 at Wembley Stadium in perhaps the most anticipated heavyweight fight since Lennox Lewis defended the world title against Mike Tyson in 2002.
So, yeah, get ready for Briggs vs. Oquendo on ESPN 8: The Ocho.