Shannon Briggs is known for his huge energy and his “Let’s go, champ” catchphrase. But in this clip from his 2019 London Real interview, he talks about a much darker period: the depression that followed his 2010 defeat to Vitali Klitschko, when his weight climbed past 400 pounds.
Brian Rose opens by naming it directly: Florida, the weight, the dark thoughts. What follows is one of the most candid conversations Briggs has given about grief, comfort eating and what a fighter does when the fighting stops.
▶ Watch the full episode: Shannon Briggs – Let’s Go Champ
A fighter in an office
After the Klitschko fight, Briggs took a job with an internet marketing company. At first it felt like security: a good salary, a big office, conventions. But he soon found corporate life slow and frustrating. Used to training camps with a clear fight date, he found himself waiting for projects that never seemed to happen. He compares it to the film Office Space.
Breakfast sandwiches, lunches and after-work drinks added up, and the weight started to pile on. The drive he had as a fighter had nowhere to go. “If that’s in you, it’s in you,” he says.
Supplements, Tyson and being pushed aside
His role at the company was to bring in nutritional products, a world he had been part of since 1992, when he became an early athlete for the supplement brand Met-Rx. He also brought in business partners from that industry.
Then the company’s owner decided he wanted to get into boxing. Briggs was against it, but he made the introduction to Mike Tyson himself, and soon the company was in the Tyson promotions business. With a far bigger name on board, Briggs says he was pushed to the side, and after a disagreement he was told not to come into work, although his salary kept arriving.
Feeding the pain
This is the hardest part of the clip. With no work and no training, Briggs says he used the money to eat his way through his days: doughnuts, fast food and ice cream. “I’m trying to feed the pain,” he says. A sweet doughnut, in his words, made him happy for a second, and then he needed something else.
He links this period to grief he had never dealt with. His stepfather, who raised him from the age of nine months, died in prison, and Briggs describes the moment he had to tell his mother. Years later, his mother died on his birthday. As a young man, he says, he learned to put that pain “in the closet”. After Klitschko, it came back.
Losing, and learning
Briggs also talks about the effect of the Klitschko fight itself. He took heavy punishment that night, and he describes being unable to defend himself as deeply depressing for someone who hates to lose. He tries to see defeats as learning experiences, but after that fight, he says, he was very hard on himself. The clip ends as he begins to describe a turning point: the birth of his daughter.
What to take from it
It is a reminder that even the most upbeat public figures can carry unresolved grief, and that comfort eating, drinking and isolation are often ways of avoiding pain. Briggs’ honesty about it is the value here.
This clip includes discussion of depression, grief and dark thoughts. In the UK, Samaritans are available any time on 116 123. This is not medical advice: if you are struggling, speak to your doctor.
Who is Shannon Briggs?
Shannon “The Cannon” Briggs is an American former heavyweight boxer from Brooklyn, New York. He turned professional in 1992, beat George Foreman in 1997 and won the WBO heavyweight title in 2006, making him a two-time heavyweight champion. His “Let’s go, champ” catchphrase has made him a popular figure well beyond boxing.
This clip comes from his 2019 London Real interview, Let’s Go Champ, in which he talks with Brian Rose about his life, his boxing career and the mindset behind his famous catchphrase.
More on London Real
Transcript
Transcript: Shannon Briggs – The Depression After The Klitschko Fight
0:00 Brian Rose: After Klitschko, things did get tough. You got depressed, and you’re down in Florida, and you’re getting up to 403 pounds. You’ve got guns everywhere, you’re on some medication, and you’re really thinking some dark thoughts.
0:17 Shannon Briggs: Like I was saying, I had got a job after the Klitschko fight, working for an internet marketing company, and things were going well. I was happy to finally be making some money, and I was thinking about my life in corporate America. I’m like: wow, this is life for me. You’re going to be doing this now until you’re 65. I believe I was like 37, 38. I was like: OK, this is it now.
0:41 Shannon Briggs: I had a huge office, with a window, and I was like: wow. After about three or four months, they moved me to another office. No window, but it was huge. Then about another three months, I went to another office with a smaller window, and I was like: OK, what’s next? I felt like that movie Office Space. The business world moved very slowly, as opposed to boxing. In boxing I get up, I train, I know I’ve got the fight coming up in six, eight weeks. This was just coming to work every day with my tie on.
1:17 Shannon Briggs: As I was doing that, Brian, I would go to work and have my breakfast in the morning, a breakfast sandwich or whatever, then lunch. Then after work I’d go out with the guys to a happy hour, and we’d put back drinks and stuff like that. I started ballooning up. And I was realising that I wasn’t used to corporate America, where I was told: hurry up and wait. We’re going to be doing this next week, next month. Nothing was happening. I really wanted to work. I’m used to working. It was just hurry up and chill. After a while, I just became depressed.
1:58 Shannon Briggs: I was sitting in an office from 9 to 5, sometimes 8.30 to 6.30, really just doing nothing. I was like: wow, is this what people do in an office? They hurry up and do nothing. I got really depressed. Then the owner of the company decided he wanted to get into boxing. I was really against it, because I had left the boxing world. I went through so much pain dealing with people, trying to navigate and keep it going. I was like: fine, I’ve got a great job. I’m making $120,000 a year. I’m going with the company to different places, to conventions. This is OK.
2:39 Shannon Briggs: But I still had that go in me, that drive in me. As a fighter, if that’s in you, it’s in you. Nobody can take it out. You could be 80,000 years old, but if you want to fight, you want to fight. I think it’s in my DNA. After a while I was fighting with that: man, I’m so bored. I’m so disgusted with life. I was piling on weight. I was getting fat. I was just getting disgusted.
3:05 Shannon Briggs: Then the guy wanted to get into boxing. I was against it, but it happened. I was like: OK, look, you’re the boss. If that’s what you want to do with your money and your time, let’s get into boxing. And I also saw it as an opportunity, because I had been hired to bring nutraceutical products to the company. That was my thing. I was always involved with nutraceuticals and business outside of boxing. I was the first and only athlete with Met-Rx. Are you familiar with Met-Rx?
3:33 Brian Rose: Yeah, yeah.
3:34 Shannon Briggs: Right, exactly. I was with Met-Rx from 1992 with Dr Connelly. I was his first and only athlete, and then Dr Connelly wound up selling the company for $1.6 billion. If you look at all my early fights, I had Met-Rx on my trunks and my T-shirts. So I knew Connelly personally, going to his house, spending time with him, listening to what he was saying, and being the crash test dummy, trying it before anyone did. I saw a future in nutraceuticals and vitamins and supplements. So I’ve always dabbled in that, in different businesses, real estate, different things.
4:14 Shannon Briggs: So I came to this company to introduce products. I had James Fulton, who invented Retin-A. He died a few years ago, rest in peace. And Charles Hensley: he invented Zicam, which cuts the duration of a cold from like seven days to three. He was my partner as well. So I brought these people to this company to bring new products to the world. It was an internet marketing company, so it was phenomenal. They had a list of 80 million people they were allowed to send emails to. I was like: great, no spam, we’re going to have customers, we’re going to make millions of dollars. I’m going to be a billionaire. Let’s go, champ.
4:54 Shannon Briggs: Unfortunately, the guy wanted to get into boxing, and next thing you know, he was like: I want to meet Mike Tyson. I’m like: what? So I called Mike Tyson. I was like: hey Mike, I’ve got a guy who really wants to meet you, and he’s a fan. So Mike and [unclear] came to Florida and sat down with him. He loved it. He worked it out and wrote him a cheque: $5 million. Let’s go, champ. So now we’re in the Mike Tyson promotions business.
5:20 Shannon Briggs: And then I think I faded really quickly, because now he had Mike Tyson. He’s got the big, big man; I’m just a little guy compared to Mike, in terms of career and all that. So that was a little push to me, because I came to this business to make money outside of boxing. Now we’re in the boxing business, and I’m even pushed to the side. So I kind of just played my position.
5:46 Shannon Briggs: Then it got to the point, Brian, where he was like: don’t even worry about coming to work any more. We had a little disagreement, and I was told not to worry about coming in. I went home, and on Friday my cheque came. It was every two weeks, and I was like: wait a minute. We had these words and we didn’t speak. I’m [unclear] for like a year and a half, and I was still receiving this cash, and I was like: wow, what’s going on?
6:09 Shannon Briggs: And I was using the money to kill myself, personally. Now, looking back in retrospect, I was using the money to kill myself. I’d go out, buy two boxes of Krispy Kreme, KFC, McDonald’s, any type of junk food, and I’d go home, and I had nothing to do. I wasn’t training. I was already ballooned up, and now I’m piling on more. I’m trying to put myself into a diabetic coma. I’m trying to feed the pain, and this sweet jelly raspberry doughnut makes me feel happy for a second. Then I need something else. I need ice cream, so I’m eating two. Butter pecan Häagen-Dazs ice cream. I’m going through it, man.
6:58 Shannon Briggs: My life was just in turmoil, and I’m like, I don’t want to end it. Because I think what happened to me was, when I was young, I put a lot of things in the closet. My life, my pain. My mom died on my birthday. My stepdad, who raised me since I was nine months old, died in prison, and I was really close to him. My mom had a heroin overdose on my birthday: heart attack, heroin overdose.
7:28 Shannon Briggs: My dad died in prison. We didn’t know what was going on. We hadn’t heard from him for a long time. Then my mom was like: I’ve got a feeling. I’ve got a feeling. I was like: nah, he’s OK. I’ll never forget. She said something happened. When you’re with somebody so long, I guess there’s a connection, so you feel this. She felt the connection: something’s wrong with [unclear].
7:56 Shannon Briggs: I wound up calling the prison, [unclear] Correctional Facility in upstate New York, and they said they can’t give out any information. I’m on the phone: hey, look, this is Shannon Briggs. My mom’s in the background crying, and then I start crying. I’m like: it’s my daddy, man. I just want to know. The guy was like: look, man, I can’t give you any information. [unclear] He had died. I was like: what? I didn’t want to tell her. I said: Ma, he died.
8:27 Shannon Briggs: I’ll never forget. She stood on the bed and she started shaking. She was trembling. I’m looking at her: Ma, get off the bed. She’s like: no, no, no. That was a tough moment for us. So I lost him. And then years later, she wound up dying on my birthday. So that was a real tragic blow for me.
8:51 Shannon Briggs: So what I had to do was learn how to take those people and put them in the closet and hide them for now. And I think when I got older, after the Klitschko fight, the punches I took to the head took a lot out of me as well. Not from the standpoint that I had brain damage, but it just depressed me. I wasn’t able to defend myself, and I really needed to win. I’m passionate about winning. I hate to lose. I feel like losing sometimes could be the worst thing ever to happen to me. I’ve lost a few times, but I say they’re learning experiences, not losses. But after that fight, I got really bad on myself. I was really down, and then my daughter was born.
