By Thomas Gerbasi

Andre Berto has been to the well before. He’s been in fights where everything didn’t go exactly as planned, and where the guys that were expected to fall down didn’t. But when you ask him about it, he doesn’t get defensive, like his opponent this Saturday night, Victor Ortiz, has been in recent weeks.

In fact, the WBC welterweight champion laughs at it these days, or more accurately, laughs at his reaction to waking up in the middle of a dogfight.

“You start to speak to yourself in the ring,” Berto chuckles, but what that response reveals is what happened after his most notable gut checks – he rose off the canvas to beat Cosme Rivera in 2007, and then survived a spirited effort from Luis Collazo in 2009 to pound out a close decision win.

Ortiz, perhaps even more notably, came up short in his 2009 bout with Marcos Maidana and then allowed a winnable fight against Lamont Peterson last year to turn into a draw thanks for his inability to live up to his nickname “Vicious.”

This contrast has been a persistent theme in the lead-up to Saturday’s HBO main event at Foxwoods in Connecticut, and when asked about it, Berto doesn’t shy away from addressing the issue.

“I believe that Victor Ortiz had some pretty good rounds with a few fighters, but as soon as they put him in with a real fighter that could punch him back and keep it coming, it was a completely different story for him,” he said. “I know how that feels when you’ve been knocking all those guys out and then you’re in there with a guy who takes those punches and then hits you even harder and keeps coming. He doesn’t care about your promoter or about them trying to make you shine in front of the networks. They’re trying to knock your head off, and I know how that feels. You’re either gonna give up like he did or you’re gonna bite down and try to stake your claim.”

So where does something like that come from? Can you learn it, or is it something you’re born with?

“You either got it or you don’t,” said Berto. “You can’t train that thing that beats in your chest.”

This weekend, Ortiz will have a brightly-lit stage on which to answer his critics. On the other side of the ring though, Berto has not emerged unscathed on his trek to Mashantucket. He’s been the target of plenty of barbs from fans and the media for not being in the “big” fights that were expected to have happened by now. Yet what many don’t understand is that perception is not always reality, and that when it comes down to it, all Berto is doing in the ring is his job. He can’t always control what happens at the negotiating table.

“I’m beating everybody in front of me,” he said. “They’ve put me in front of guys like David Estrada and Carlos Quintana, guys that have credible names and that have already beaten pretty good fighters, but once I beat them, their credit is shot. And people don’t always know the business. They just figure that if they want you to fight (Miguel) Cotto or (Manny) Pacquiao, then it’s easy to make the fight. They don’t know the logistics behind it and they don’t know that there’s a lot of politics involved and it’s extremely hard to make these fights happen. We’ve been reaching out and trying to get this stuff done for a while, but in the end it just hasn’t gone our way. And I can’t blame the fans because they’re hardcore boxing fans and they want to see the best fight the best, and they have a lot of expectations for me. But I’ve gotten over it and I just want to continue to prove that I’m one of the best out there.”

The Ortiz fight, while not at a level of a Pacquiao, Cotto, or Shane Mosley, does serve an important purpose for the Florida native. It keeps him busy, pits him against a foe with a significant profile in the game who is a good style matchup, and it offers him the ability to lead into the final stages of his third year as a world champion with a spectacular flourish should he knock Ortiz out. And with Ortiz moving up from 140 pounds to 147, Berto believes he will have some physical edges that will manifest themselves on fight night.

“I’m a smaller welterweight compared to the rest of them, and he might be a little bigger than me, but I still think there’s a difference of him taking those punches from a 140-pounder to a 147-pounder,” he said. “There will definitely be a difference, especially from me, because I’m one of the harder punchers at ’47 and I’m one of the fastest at ’47. He’s really gonna feel the weight difference, the punching power difference, and I think he’s gonna be surprised at the speed as well.”

After stopping Miguel Angel Rodriguez for the vacant WBC belt in June of 2008, Berto scored three consecutive decision wins over former world champions Steve Forbes, Collazo, and Juan Urango, before knocking out Quintana and Freddy Hernandez in a tumultuous 2010 that was more notable for what happened outside the ring than in it.

Expected to face Mosley in January of 2010, Berto pulled out of the fight to instead deal with the aftermath of the devastating earthquake in Haiti that affected numerous members of his family. He went on to visit Haiti and establish the “Berto Dynasty Foundation” to aid in relief efforts, but even these days, his voice softens when talking about the year he just went through.

“2010 was definitely a challenging year for me,” he said. “It tested me as a young man from a lot of different angles and it forced me to really mature even more that what I was. After all the things that I went through and seeing the things that I’ve seen, I don’t think a lot of people see that in their whole lifetime. To go through that and grow from it and gain so much from it, it brought me to a place where I definitely appreciate life, my family and everything I have, and it definitely makes me appreciate this talent that I have.”

Now, at 27, it’s time to kick that talent into gear and hopefully get the fights he’s been waiting for. But he’s not going to lose his cool if they don’t materialize immediately. He wisely learned that lesson a long time ago.

“You can’t get frustrated in this game,” said Berto. “I think that’s where a lot of people make mistakes. I’m young in this game and I’m patient because I understand how the game works. So me being frustrated and upset about everything is not gonna change anything. I can sit here and bark all day long that I need to fight this guy or I need to fight that guy, but these promoters and these fighters are not gonna budge because they don’t care. They’re worried about getting paid and they’re gonna listen to the ones who are promoting their careers. I just gotta keep playing my part, and I believe that if I keep going in there and dominating and even stepping it up and knocking every one of these guys out that they put in front of me, there won’t be too much of a choice when it comes to public demand and HBO demanding these huge fights for me. So I’m gonna continue staying positive and continue doing what I gotta do.”

So there it is. Andre Berto has heard the talk, he’s read your comments, and he gets it. You want to see him in there with the elite of the welterweight division, and he’s ready to go when they are. It may not be what you expected to hear in between the jabs and jibes, but after 2010, Berto looks at the world a lot differently than he might have before January of last year. He just wants to fight. That’s what he’s offering, and that’s what he’s always offered.

“People feel like I’ve had an easy road, but realistically, everybody has had to sit back and watch me grow in front of the world, in front of the HBO cameras and in front of guys like David Estrada, Carlos Quintana, Stevie Forbes, and Juan Urango,” he said. “If you’re not ready and you’re a young kid, these guys can expose you quickly. The public had to watch me grow and they’ve seen me go through my ups and downs and they’ve seen me going into the deep waters with these guys, but they’ve also seen how I’ve responded. I fought Luis Collazo and it was the same thing. I wasn’t in the best of shape and he pushed me to the limit, but then you saw how I responded.”

Like a fighter.  

Tags: Andre Berto , Victor Ortiz , Berto vs Ortiz , Berto-Ortiz