By Allan Fox: Floyd Mayweather Jr’s fight against Andre Berto will be taking place this Saturday night on September 12th on Showtime pay-per-view at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas, Nevada, and there is surprisingly very little buzz about the fight on the boxing forums on the internet despite the fight being only four days away.
It looks as if fans aren’t all that excited about this match-up at all considering that it’s largely seen as a bad mismatch between a far more talented Mayweather against a fighter with a 3-3 record in his last six fights.
The question that you have to ask is whether the Mayweather-Berto fight is even worth the $64.99 that it’s going for on pay-per-view. That price is for standard definition. For boxing fans wanting to see the Mayweather vs. Berto fight on high definition, it’ll cost them $74.99 to see it.
Whether fans want to pay the price to see it is an individual decision. While the main event may not be the greatest fight, it is worthy of at least being a regular Showtime fight. But where the PPV card’s value comes from is the stacked undercard that comes with the Mayweather-Berto fight.
There are four interesting fights on the undercard that help boost up the value of the card. You’ve got the following fights on the card:
Badou Jack vs. George Groves
Roman Martinez vs. Orlando Salido
Vanes Martirosyan vs. Ishe Smith
Jhonny Gonzalez vs. Jonathan Oquendo
These are quality fights that boxing fans haven’t seen on a Mayweather and/or especially a Manny Pacquiao card in ages. The last time Mayweather had a stacked card like this for his undercard was when he fought Saul “Canelo” Alvarez two years ago in September 2013. Pacquiao hasn’t had a really stacked undercard in a long time.
If the boxing fans are going to make their decision whether or not to purchase the Mayweather vs. Berto fight based on the main event, I don’t know that there’s going to be a lot of fans purchasing the card. I think the fans will stay away because the fight is perceived to be a mismatch, and Berto is no longer relevant in this day and age.
The younger boxing fans don’t have much of a clue who Berto is because his fights haven’t been routinely televised since he started losing frequently. The hardcore fans obviously know Berto very well, but what they know of him is that he’s a fighter who has been on a serious decline for the past four years. Berto’s career is pretty much in the same boat as Victor Ortiz, a fighter with a 2-3-1 record in his last six fights. Like Berto, Ortiz’s career also started going downhill in 2011.
I think Mayweather made a mistake in selecting Berto as his opponent, especially if this is really going to be Mayweather’s last fight of his career. I don’t think the fans are going to purchase the fight in high numbers, and people aren’t happy that Mayweather is ending his career with a whimper instead of a roar.
You could understand Mayweather taking on a fighter of Berto’s class if he was incapable of beating the top fighters like Keith Thurman, Shawn Porter, Kell Brook or Amir Khan, but that’s not the case. Mayweather could beat all of those fighters with relative ease. Those are the fighters that boxing fans wanted to see Mayweather fight. They didn’t want to see him fight Berto.
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