By Scott Gilfoid: It’s funny how a fight with Oscar De La Hoya has a way of adding a big boost to the career’s of certain boxers. This was never more apparent than in the case of former super featherweight Steve Forbes (33-6, 9 KOs) who will be getting a shot against the WBC welterweight champion Andre Berto (22-0, 19 KOs) on September 27th at the Staples Center, in Los Angeles, California. Forbes, 31, a fighter with almost zero power, has very little chance of pulling off an upset against the faster, and much more powerful Berto. In fact, it will probably be a minor miracle if Forbes is still around to here the final bell.

He’s a good fighter, but he’s hopelessly out of his league in the welterweight division and both too small and weak to compete against the big punchers in the division like Berto. Although he’s only an inch shorter than Berto at 5’7″, he doesn’t have the immense power to make up for his lack of size against the bigger welterweights. It’s a wonder that he even got the fight with Berto, considering that Forbes lost almost every round of his fight with De La Hoya, losing by a lopsided 12-round unanimous decision to the Golden Boy. Obviously, Forbes is being brought in to make Berto look good while at the same time not give him too many problems like other top welterweights such as Jesus-Soto Karass, Jackson Osei Bonsu and Luis Carlos Abregu might bring to Berto.

If there’s any weakness for Berto, it’s his sometimes shaky, which has given him some close calls in his fights, most noticeably in his bout with Cosme Rivera in which Berto was knocked down in the 6th round a year ago on July 27th. Berto has improved somewhat since then, fighting without getting dropped and hurt, but he’s so far been matched soft against very beatable opposition. It remains to be seen what will happen when he has to take on a big slugger like the aforementioned Bonsu, or Abegu. Berto certainly has more than enough power to end things on his own terms, but if he faces a fighter that can stand up to his own big shots, and fire back with big shots of their own, then things get a little less certain for him.

Thankfully for Berto, he doesn’t have to worry about that, at least not yet, by his selection of Forbes. If there is anything positive to say about Forbes, I guess it would have to be about his defense, which is very similar to Floyd Mayweather Jr. The reason for that is because Forbes has been trained by the Mayweather family for many years now, and he fights like one of them. He moves well, throws a nifty left hook and is deadly with his shot, speedy shots on the inside. What’s missing, however, is power, speed and size. In the junior welterweight division, Forbes would be a top fighter, even at his age of 31, but in the welterweight division he’s more at a distinct disadvantage against the bigger fighters because of his lack of power and size.

Against De La Hoya, Forbes made him look bad at times, hitting him cleanly with pot shots and quick flurries, but in the end he didn’t have the size to compete with De La Hoya and ended up losing handily. He did pull off De La Hoya’s right eye and make him look as if the fight was harder than it actually was.

This is obviously a huge chance for Forbes, one that he probably won’t be getting again in his career. If he can somehow get Berto into a dog fight, and possibly tire him out, he might be able to take him out in the later rounds of the fight if he can land one of his short left hooks to the head. However, he’s going to be taking a lot of punishment from Berto, good defense or not, and it will be interesting to see if he can stand up to that kind of abuse without getting stopped.