By Dave Lahr: On January 30th, World Boxing Council welterweight champion Andre Berto (25-0, 19 KO’s) meets up with WBA welterweight title holder Shane Mosley (46-5, 39 KO’s) in unification bout at the Mandalay Bay Resort & Casino, in Las Vegas, Nevada. This fight has big importance for the winner of the fight, because the fighter that comes out on top will have their pick of a fight against either Floyd Mayweather Jr. or Manny Pacquiao, whichever one they decide to choose from.

Berto is the talented HBO fighter who is just now reaching his prime years at 26, whereas Mosley is the grizzled veteran who has been a big star of the sport for the past 13 years. This fight has unfortunately been forgotten about by many boxing fans because of all the drama and hype behind the failed Mayweather-Pacquiao mega fight that recently fell apart during negotiations.

Berto has the speed and fire power to give the 38-year-old Mosley problems. However, Berto despite wins over Juan Urango, Steve Forbes and Luis Collazo is still unproven. Berto failed to impress in the Collazo fight and many people think he lost the fight. The fights against Forbes and Urango were a case of Berto fighting pumped up light welterweight opponents.

Apart from those fights, Berto has mainly faced 2nd tier fighters. That doesn’t mean that he can’t do well against Mosley, because Berto could make Shane look old on January 30th if he fights with confidence and lets his hands go.

However, it does show that Berto is short on the experience side of things, and will be taking a big step up in competition in his fight with Mosley. Berto will have to fight much better than he has in his bouts with Urango, Forbes and Collazo if he wants to beat Mosley, because Berto didn’t look impressive in those bouts.

He held way too much and showed a tendency to throw a punch and immediately grab his opponent in a tight clinch. It’s unknown why Berto has changed his style of fighting all of a sudden since taking on better opposition, but it could be that he’s done it to avoid getting hit as much. In his earlier fights, Berto was more of a pure slugger who threw a lot of fast shots in trying to take out his opponents.

When he stepped it up a little in his fight with Cosme Rivera in July 2007, Berto was knocked down by Rivera and had to get off the canvas to beat him. In his next fight, Berto took a lot of punishment in his 11th round TKO win over David Estrada in September 2007. From there, Berto chalked up wins over Michel Trabant, Miguel Angel Rodriguez, Forbes, Collazo and most recently Urango. Those are all decent fighters, but none of them are even close to being in the same class as Mosley.

At 5’8 ½”, Berto is tad short for a welterweight, and might be better off if he were to consider moving down a weight class to the light welterweight division where he would be able to dominate without as many problems. However, the WBC is short of talent right now, and Berto, other than his fight with Mosley, should be able to dominate over there for a little while before running into troubles from a big puncher.

I expect Berto to lose this fight to Mosley and lose big. This is too big of a jump up for Berto and his punch and grab technique will be useless for him against Mosley. That kind of thing might work against the kind of opposition that he’s been facing, but it’s not likely to work against Mosley.