By Allan Fox: It didn’t take former IBF/WBC welterweight champion Andre Berto (30-4, 23 KOs) to start complaining about Floyd “Money” Mayweather Jr’s fighting style in order to come up with excuses for why he lost last Saturday night to him by a lopsided 12 round unanimous decision on Showtime PPV from the MGM Grand in Las Vegas, Nevada.
Berto, 32, say he would have needed track shoes for the fight for him to do better in the ring. You have to wonder whether Berto and trainer Virgil Hunter even sat down to watch some of Mayweather’s past fights before they took the fight.
Had they watched Mayweather fight before, they would have known that they would need to use quicker feet to cut off the ring on him. Berto must have planned on worked on his foot movement in training camp because there’s really no reason for him to be complaining after the fact about Mayweather’s movement.
“I didn’t know I was going to have to wear track shoes tonight,” Berto said via TMZ.com after the fight. “I had to do a lot of chasing. That’s him, man. He runs around. He holds you. He does all that type of [expletive]. But everybody can see I really gave him a fight.”
Berto did not give Mayweather a fight. He wasn’t throwing a lot of punches even when he had Mayweather directly in front of him in the fight. He just stood there waiting for an opening instead of just firing his shots off.
Mayweather won the fight by the scores of 120-108, 117-111 and 118-110. I’d say half of the clinches were initiated by Berto. He didn’t have the stamina clearly or the ideas of what to do when he was in front of Mayweather much of the time. So instead of throwing shots, he’d grab Mayweather in a clinch to just rest and wait for the referee to separate them.
Even when Berto was holding, he wasn’t trying to fight out of the clinch the way fighters are supposed to do when they’re attempting to win the fight. Berto would just hold passively. He did not have the look of a fighter eager to win. He had the look of someone who was just there for the payday.
Berto didn’t throw enough punches to win the fight, and he did no look like someone who was well trained and ready for everything that Mayweather was doing. Berto should have not initiated clinched, he should have let Mayweather clinch him, he should have thrown nonstop punches each time Mayweather was in the pocket, and he should have been prepared for the movement he was going to be seeing in the fight. Berto wasn’t ready at all for the fight. He looked like someone who had trained to fight a rematch with Josesito Lopez rather than fight Mayweather.
he Mayweather-Berto fight will be replayed this Saturday, September 26th on Showtime Boxing at 9PM ET/6PM PT. Orlando Salido vs. Roman Martinez 2 will be shown as part of the Mayweather vs. Berto fight. After the fight card is over, Showtime ALL ACCESS: Mayweather vs. Berto Epilogue will be televised. It’ll show behind the scene look at the two fighters.
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