By Dan Ambrose: (Photo Naoki Fukuda). World Boxing Council (WBC) welterweight champion Andre Berto (26-0, 20 KO’s) looked badly weight drained at Friday’s weigh-in for tonight’s fight against #10 ranked WBC contender Freddy Hernandez (29-1, 20 KO’s) on the undercard of the Juan Manuel Marquez vs. Michael Katsidis bout at the MGM Grand, in Las Vegas, Nevada. Berto, who usually looks stocky and muscular for his fights, was visibly thin and weak looking during the weigh-in on Friday. Berto has obviously taken off a considerable amount of water weight and perhaps muscle to strip down to the 147 pound welterweight limit. However, as thin looking as Berto is, it makes you wonder how hard he trained for this fight. Berto may have cut corners and taken it easy during training because Hernandez isn’t well known is considered another easy opponent for Berto to add another win to his inflated record.

The knock on Berto is that he’s been matched soft his entire six-year pro career. You know things are bad when Berto’s best opponent during his entire career is Luis Collazo. It’s unclear what the hold up has been from Berto’s management’s standpoint because Berto should have been fighting much better fighters than Hernandez a long time ago, but for some reason has been allowed to dine on lesser fighters. HBO has put up with it and continued to show Berto’s fights one after another despite the fact that he’s fought zero interesting opponents and half of his opponents have come from the smaller light welterweight division instead of the welterweight class.

In choosing Hernandez from way down in the pack, Berto has continued his trend of facing weaker opposition. Supposedly this will change after this fight because HBO doesn’t want to show anymore mismatches between Berto and obscure opponents. It will be interesting to see if that happens. In the meantime, Berto may have a fight on his hands if he’s as skinny in the fight as he was during the weigh-in.