By Jason Kim: Former WBC welterweight champion Andre Berto (28-1, 22 KO’s) bounced back from his defeat to Victor Ortiz from his last fight in April to come back last night and defeat the IBF welterweight champion Jan Zaveck (31-2, 18 KO’s) on a cuts stoppage after the 5th round at the Beau Rivage Resort and Casino in Biloxi, Mississippi.

In winning the fight, Berto once again becomes a welterweight champion by picking up the International Boxing Federation title. Berto immediately called out Ortiz, saying he wants to fight him to avenge the loss. However, Ortiz is already tied up with a much, much bigger fight against Floyd Mayweather Jr. and he’s not worried about taking a backwards step towards Berto anytime soon.

Berto, however, needs to turn his attention to his mandatory challenger 36-year-old Randall Bailey (42-7, 36 KO’s), who defeated Yorgi Estrella by a 10 round unanimous decision last Saturday night on the undercard. Bailey is who Berto will have to fight next unless Berto’s management does some wheeling and dealing to avoid that fight by giving Bailey some step aside money so that Berto can pick out some hopefully better opposition to fight.

While Berto was the WBC champion, he dodged a title defense against #1 challenger Selcuk Aydin for quite some time to fight guys like Freddie Hernandez. As you can see, it doesn’t necessarily mean that Berto will fight better guys. He fights guys that are actually lesser in some cases. But Bailey is someone that Berto will have to deal with in the future at some point.

Berto can’t avoid the guy forever. Bailey can punch and he could be a problem for Berto. To be sure, Bailey was beaten by Juan Urango two years ago by an 11th round TKO, but he landed a lot of huge shots in that fight. It’s questionable whether Berto could take those kinds of shots, because he seemed to be wilting after the 4th last night against Zaveck.

He looked really good in the first round rounds, but in the 5th and 6th, Berto looked just as exhausted as he did in his loss to Ortiz. If Zaveck’s skin had held out, I don’t think Berto would have won that fight. Zaveck looked by far the much stronger guy by the end of the 5th, and that’s not a good sign for Berto going into a fight against an even bigger puncher like Bailey.

The one plus that Berto has in a fight against Bailey is that Bailey is really just a pumped up light welterweight and not a true welterweight. He moved up in weight to the welterweight division in 2009, and has faced mostly limited opposition. He’s more of a light welterweight than a welterweight at this point, and Berto does really well against light welterweights. Indeed, Berto has really cleaned up on the 140 pounders in the past three years.