By Manuel Perez: World Boxing Council welterweight champion Andre Berto (25-0, 19 KO’s) won an incredibly boring 12-round unanimous decision against his Colombian challenger Juan Urango (21-2-1, 16 KO’s) on Saturday night at the Seminole Hard Rock Hotel and Casino, in Hollywood, Florida. The final judges’ scores were 118-110, 118-110 and 117-111.
Berto, 25, fought safety first from the 1st round until the last, clinching at every opportunity, circling the ring and basically just stinking up the joint. This was a very hard fight for me to watch because of Berto’s boring self preservation style of fighting and I had to drink literally two cups of good coffee to stand watching the fight.
If Berto was hoping to use this fight as a springboard for a big money fight against Miguel Cotto, Shane Mosley, Floyd Mayweather, Juan Manuel Marquez or Manny Pacquiao, I think Berto failed miserably at making a case that he deserves a fight with any of them.
I wouldn’t pay a dime to see Berto fight anyone after a performance like this. This was one of those Felix Sturm type fights with jabbing, grabbing and little action. If Berto wants a big fight he needs to forget about that and give Luis Collazo a rematch, because I think Collazo beat him in their January 2009 fight. Berto won that fight by a 12-round unanimous decision and got beat up by the light-hitting Collazo.
As for Saturday night’s bout with Urango, Berto set out to clinch as much as possible which seems like a dumb move because HBO is very selective in the fights that they show on their network and Berto seemed to be shooting himself in the foot by fighting in a dull manner.
In the first six rounds of the fight, Berto clinched frequently, flicked a jab that looked a lot like a backhand for some reason and threw single shots. After throwing punches, Berto would either dart away to the left or right or dive in for a clinch. It incredibly off-putting in it’s predictability.
Berto was treating Urango as if he were a knockout artist of the first order instead of a slow, short, light welterweight who had little chance to do anything in this fight. You have to remember, Urango was out-boxed by Ricky Hatton in a one-sided 12-round decision loss in January 2007.
That pretty much tells you all you need to know about Urango’s chances of winning against Berto. Urango landed next to nothing in any of the first six rounds, and just plodded forward all the time, missing slow punches and being grabbed repeatedly by Berto.
If it were me being clinched all the time, I would roughed Berto up on the inside and made him think twice about grabbing me. Urango didn’t seem to mind all the clinching, though, and just went along with it and steadily fell more and more behind in the fight.
Urango landed a handful of punches in the 4th. I counted six all total, which is a terrible number for most fighters but was actually good for Urango who was doing much worse than this during the first three rounds.
In the last half of the fight, Berto upped the pace of his running around the ring, clinching and jabbing. The crowd started booing around the 9th at the running. I can’t blame them because the fight was awful to look at and I felt nauseated watching the garbage. In the 10th, Berto loaded up with a few of his shots and fought okay for the first minute of the round but then went back to running and clinching in the last two minutes of the round. In the final two rounds, Berto ran continuously, clinching Urango often.
“I thought I did alright,” Berto said after the bout. “A few spots I got a little lazy. He’s a tough guy. A hard puncher, a little bull dog. I showed I can box and I can bang. I’m a complete fighter now.”
No, Berto, you’re a boring now, get it? I think Andre needs to sit down and watch the fight with a clear mind and pretend he’s watching someone else fight as a neutral observer and then ask himself if he’d be interested in paying to watch that fighter box like that again. I know I wouldn’t. I’d rather watch an ESPN fight between a couple of C-level fighters that put their heart on the line by firing back and forth than watching Berto circle around the ring throwing jabs and clinching all the time.
That was some really boring crap. I honestly can’t remember seeing a more boring fight than this one. Usually, I’ll walk away if a fight is this boring but I had to stick it out to write about, but damn, Berto was like bug repellant. This was a really horrible fight, I got to tell you.
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