Is Berto the best choice for Mayweather?

By Michael Vena - 08/14/2015 - Comments

berto111By Yannis Mihanos: WBA/WBC 147lb champion Floyd Mayweather Jr. (48-0, 26 KOs) has succeeded in staying unbeaten for all his professional career from 1996 and on. On September 12, Mayweather will be fighting 31-year-old former IBF/WBC welterweight champion Andre Berto (30-3, 23 KOs) on Showtime pay-per-view at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas, Nevada.

Mayweather’s new choice has come again under the microscope of critics from all over the boxing world.

Champions at the elite level have basically 3 choices to make when selecting new opponents and are the following:

1) Fight the best out there.

This is supposed to be a straight forward choice. It is also a very much fan friendly choice. Intellectual fighters who want to prolong their career and stay on track, tend to avoid this choice as much as possible. And the reason is quite obvious: Too much risk.

In fact it took 6 long years for Floyd Mayweather to finally fight his biggest rival Manny Pacquiao in facing him in May of this year in the “Fight of the Century” in Las Vegas on HBO and Showtime PPV. There are always of course mandatory defenses that a champion must take every now and then. Mayweather has fought many title holders.

2) If there is no one else best out there then fight again the same opponent.

That is certain to have a commercial success. Sequels, threequels even a fourquel are well accepted by the public. Mayweather fought two times against Jose Luis Castillo and Marcos Maidana, and no one out there complained about that.

The trilogy of Mickey Ward vs Arturo Gatti is one trilogy of fights that I fondly remember. There are of course many others but I think you get the idea.

3) This is the choice of the best fighting with the least best. Rings a bell to anyone?

Well, when the motive is to stay unbeaten and just keep the momentum going this becomes a natural choice. Berto fits well into this category, a warrior at heart but definitely not an elite fighter.

To be fair, Pacquiao too has fought warriors at heart but with less skills like Brandon Rios.

If you ask me what I think about Mayweather’s choices I would say this: I am not Mayweather and I am not into his head. His strategy so far was successful. Could he have made better choices?

In my opinion yes he could but this is probably the theme of another article.



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