Mayweather: Everybody is overlooking Berto

By Boxing News - 08/19/2015 - Comments

floyd6666By Chris Williams: WBA/WBC welterweight champion Floyd Mayweather Jr. (48-0, 26 KOs) quite rightly believes that his opponent Andre Berto (30-3, 23 KOs) is being overlooked by the boxing fans, the media and the odds-makers for their fight on September 12th on Showtime pay-per-view from the MGM Grand in Las Vegas, Nevada.

Mayweather feels that the odds should be much closer because Berto has a lot more talent than what people believe him to have, and he’ll be making it a lot more competitive fight than people realize. Mayweather didn’t come right out and say it, but it’s possible that he sees Berto as giving him a better fight than Manny Pacquiao did last May.

Pacquiao fought like a fighter lost at sea without a compass or any clue in how to navigate the ocean waters. His trainer Freddie Roach was like a broken record that was skipping and repeating the same thing. Pacquiao had no clue and neither did Roach. It’s not going to be hard for Berto to do a better job than Pacquiao did.

“Berto’s a tough competitor. He’s a guy that’s going to push me,” Mayweather said via Fighthype. “A good jab can always get the job done, but with this guy, we’re going to have to throw more combinations. We’re going to have to go to the body. He’s going to bring his A-game and I’m going to bring my A-game. I think everybody is overlooking Berto, and I think the betting odds should be a lot closer. The last fight [against Manny Pacquiao] was more like a chess match. This is more like checkers – real quick and fast. I’ve been boxing a lot in the gym. I have 10 different sparring partners.”

I do think Mayweather is quite right about the odds needing to be closer. With the way Berto looked in his last fight against Josesito Lopez, I think he’ll give Mayweather his toughest fight since his first fight against Marcos Maidana. Mayweather will have to adapt to what Berto is doing and not take a lot of time in coming up with an alternate strategy to nullify what he’s doing.

Berto is potentially more dangerous than Pacquiao and Maidana, because he’s got hand speed as well as punching power going for him. Pacquiao isn’t the puncher that Berto is. He’s more like a fast lightweight than a welterweight. Berto has legitimate welterweight power to go along with his fast hands. If you start assuming that he’s over-the-hill due to his losses in recent years, you’re going to wind up getting knocked out like Lopez was.

Berto is going to come out fast and look to explode on Mayweather immediately in this fight. He knows he can’t let Mayweather get any momentum in this fight because if Mayweather is able to start off fast, Berto is going to take too much punishment. Berto knows that he needs to stay with Mayweather every step of the way and not let him take control of the fight for an instant.

With Pacquiao, he fell apart from the very start of the fight after getting hit with some of Mayweather’s counter right hands. Pacquiao was able to have a little success in the 3rd and 4th round when Mayweather fought with his back against the ropes during those rounds. But from the 5th round on, Mayweather used movement to foil Pacquiao’s attacks, and the fight became really easy from that point on. Pacquiao and Roach didn’t have the foggiest idea what to do, and it just became a full scale rout for Mayweather.



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