Andre Berto: Will he ever take on a top level fighter or will HBO just keep cramming him down boxing fan’s throats?

By Ronald Peter: Andre Berto (26-0, 20 KO) has been WBC welterweight champion for just over 2 years and on December 27th he’ll be taking on a relative unknown fighter in Freddy Hernandez (29-1, 20 KO) who holds KO victories over Demarcus Corley and in his last fight he stopped former contender Mike Anchondo via 4th round KO.

I find Andre Berto to be very overrated and very protected, the 2 best fighters on his résumé are Luis Collazo and Carlos Quintana, Collazo took him to the limit over a 12 round controversial loss and Quintana knocked him down in the 1st round. Andre has good hand speed and decent power, but most of those KO’s on his padded résumé came early in his career, he seems to have the tendency of falling into his opponents style and in my opinion would get picked a part by any high skilled opponent. I think Berto would lose to Manny Pacquiao, Floyd Mayweather, Joshua Clottey, Mike Jones, Saul Alvarez, Timothy Bradley, Devon Alexander, Amir Khan, Paul Williams, James Kirkland, Alfredo Angulo and Miguel Cotto just to name a few. Andre Berto’s promotional team seems hell bent on protecting him in hopes of securing a big payday, but until he beats at least 2 or 3 of the names mentioned above in my eyes he doesn’t deserve it.

The fight that was supposed to be made was Berto vs the hard hitting and WBC #1 ranked Selcuk Aydin (20-0, 15 KO), but both promotional teams could not agree to terms and decided to have interim fights then try to negotiate a fight for next year, so HBO was left to pay a reported 1.25 million for the Hernandez vs. Berto bout. This has me shaking my head in disgust. There are rumors that Andre Berto might vacate his WBC welterweight title after this fight, he started his career in 2004 and weighed 162 pounds in his debut and might be struggling to make the 147 pound welterweight limit at this point in his career. If he does move up to the 154 pound division look for him to fight the likes of Cory Spinks, Cornelius Bundrage, Grady Brewer or resurrect the fight with the ageing Sugar Shane Mosley.