By Chris Williams: Top Rank promoter Bob Arum was reportedly fuming at Thursday’s news conference for the Fernando Montiel vs. Nonito Donaire fight for Saturday, complaining long and hard about the fact that WBC welterweight champion Andre Berto (27-0, 21 KO’s) is being matched up against light welterweight Victor Ortiz (28-2-2, 22 KO’s) instead the winner of Saturday night’s fight between unbeaten welterweight contender Mike Jones and Jesus Soto-Karass.
Arum doesn’t like the idea of Berto facing yet another light welterweight contender instead of facing one of the top contenders in the welterweight division. It’s hard to disagree with what Arum is saying, but what can you do? Berto is one of those fighters that has been aimed at the smaller light welterweights about half the time in his title defenses since capturing the belt in 2008. It would be nice if Berto would stick to fighting guys from his own division but if the WBC isn’t going to do anything about it, what can you do?
Here’s what Arum said exactly at the press conference, as quoted from Dan Rafael at ESPN: “Why is Andre Berto fighting a 140 pound fighter [Ortiz] who had a draw with another 140 pound fighter? [Lamont Peterson]. There is one thing that I’m sure of, that these two fighters, these two welterweights [speaking about his Top Rank stable fighters Soto-Karass and Jones], if they fought Victor Ortiz, they would destroy him. Why is Andre Berto fighting Victor Ortiz and not fighting the winner of this fight? That’s a question that we all should be asking. What the hell is going on?”
I don’t mind Berto fighting Jones and Soto-Karass, but I don’t know that either of those two fighters are any better than Ortiz. Jones fought like Frankenstein in his fight with Soto-Karass last November, and looked nothing like a top five welterweight contender. And Soto-Karass is a fatally flawed fighter, a fringe contender at best. I would give Ortiz a very good shot at beating both of those guys, as long as Ortiz is fighting aggressively and not with the passive style that he seems to have adopted since his loss to Marcos Maidana.
But, yeah, I sure wish Berto would stop fighting welterweights. It’s getting really boring with him doing that every fight. He might as well just move down in weight and let a welterweight-centered fighter take over as the WBC champion. If it’s Jones, I can’t see him holding onto the title for long, because he’s so stiff and slow.
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