by David P. Greisman
Sometimes being good ain’t good enough. And sometimes the promise of big money ain’t big enough.
This is the conundrum of welterweight beltholder Andre Berto.
He is good enough to have a world title, but he has not yet beaten competition that would prove he belongs among those at the top of the division.
He is a big enough star to get paid well, but he is not yet notable enough to get the important fights he needs.
He is notable enough to be on the verge of breaking through, but he believes he is more of a star than he truly is and wants to get paid more.
That belief is what could keep him from breaking through, from getting that fight that would insert him among the top names at 147 pounds.
That recognition would get him the big fights.
That ability to get the big fights would get him the big money.
These are the calculations Andre Berto must make. These are decisions that are the consequences of inflation – an inflated standing perpetuated by HBO, resulting in an inflated sense of worth from Berto.
This is how Berto got to where he is now:
Berto turned pro at the end of 2004, a former Olympian seeing whether his speed would translate into success beyond amateur competition. He took the usual route for prospects with potential, fighting on Showtime’s “ShoBox: The New Generation” and ESPN2’s “Friday Night Fights.”
And then he got the attention of HBO.
Berto, under the promotional banner of Lou DiBella, fought on undercards supporting other DiBella fighters. When Jermain Taylor faced Kassim Ouma, Berto started the broadcast, stopping Miguel Figueroa. When Paulie Malignaggi faced Edner Cherry, Berto kicked off the show with a drubbing of Norberto Bravo. And when Taylor was dethroned by Kelly Pavlik, Berto scored a technical knockout over David Estrada.
HBO had a likeable, good-looking, fast-punching prizefighter. Not only was Berto marketable, but he was also fighting in the star-studded welterweight division. He could be presented first as a contender, next as a titlist, and later as a star.
Step one: present Berto as a contender.
Berto stopped Estrada, a gritty trial horse who had lost a decision to Shane Mosley and taken Kermit Cintron to war, albeit in defeat. That was September 2007. Four months later, Berto stopped Michel Trabant, a former title challenger.
They weren’t big names, but they were enough for the World Boxing Council to install Berto in one of the two spots for a title belt that had been vacated by Floyd Mayweather Jr. That, and the WBC knew it could get a percentage of Berto’s HBO paychecks.
Step two: present Berto as a titlist.
Berto beat Miguel “Miki” Rodriguez, a dubious choice by the WBC for a title shot. With the win, Berto captured a major sanctioning body belt.
Step three: present Berto as a star.
The Rodriguez fight was Berto’s first HBO main event. From there, the network followed a golden rule of marketing, keeping Berto in the public eye. It paid him well – too well, many say – hoping that the investment would ultimately produce a lucrative attraction.
Berto out-pointed undersized veteran Steve Forbes on the undercard to Shane Mosley’s knockout of Ricardo Mayorga. Berto headlined in his next bout, an entertaining battle against former welterweight titlist Luis Collazo that was the only fight on that broadcast. And Berto was atop the card for his decision victory over junior-welterweight beltholder Juan Urango.
Build a record. Build momentum. Build experience. And then it becomes time to see if all that has been built can now stand on its own against a true challenge.
Berto signed to face Shane Mosley, a bout scheduled for January 2010.
Mosley was 38 years old but had regained the welterweight championship. He had not fought since January 2009 but had more experience, more speed and more power than anyone Berto had ever faced before.
The fight never happened. It was not Berto’s fault.
A massive earthquake turned large portions of Haiti to rubble, leaving members of Berto’s family in desperate conditions. Berto called off the fight to focus on a more important situation, then returned in April, stopping former 147-pound titleholder Carlos Quintana.
This is where Berto is now:
He is in nearly the same position as he was at this time last year. He is young (26 years old, turning 27 in September). He is undefeated (26-0 with 20 knockouts). He is on the outside in his division. The fighters at the top are Floyd Mayweather Jr. and Manny Pacquiao. The fighters in the second tier were Shane Mosley and Miguel Cotto – both of whom are now competing one division up at junior middleweight – and Berto.
And Berto had another opportunity to face Mosley, but the fight did not happen.
“I’ve been trying to shout out a fight with Cotto, a fight with Mosley. A lot of these guys, they don’t want to do it right now, ” Berto told this scribe in an interview earlier this month in Montreal, where Berto was in town for the light heavyweight championship match between Jean Pascal and Chad Dawson.
“The Cotto people, they don’t want to do it right now at this point for some reason, even though I think that’s the biggest fight that everybody wants to see besides Mayweather-Pacquiao,” Berto said.
Mosley wanted the purse split for a fight with Berto to be split with 60 percent going to him, 40 percent to Berto, promoter Lou DiBella told Lem Satterfield of AOL FanHouse and BoxingScene.
Berto wanted to earn the same amount as Mosley.
“Shane Mosley, of course he fought Floyd, his stock dropped [in defeat],” Berto said in Montreal. “Me coming off a win, I think it’s only right that we go 50-50. I don’t really think most people even want to see him fight now. I think it’s totally right to do it that way.”
Mosley is facing Sergio Mora instead on a pay-per-view. Berto doesn’t have another fight set. His team is not interested in a mandated title defense against Selcuk Aydin, an undefeated Turkish fighter. DiBella told Rick Reeno of BoxingScene that HBO wouldn’t buy Berto-Aydin. Berto’s team also apparently doesn’t want him to go overseas to face Aydin, who fights out of both Germany and Turkey.
That leaves Berto with, well… with what?
A few names are being floated for Berto’s next fight, tentatively scheduled for November: junior welterweights Andriy Kotelnik and Marcos Maidana, and welterweight Mike Jones. Kotelnik’s promoter, Don King, told BoxingScene’s Reeno that HBO isn’t interested in Berto-Kotelnik.
None of those fights would allow Berto to join the ranks of the welterweight elite. None of those fights are worth big money. He will probably get paid well nevertheless. Berto is managed by Al Haymon, who also guides the careers of numerous other fighters featured on HBO. Several boxing writers have criticized HBO for overpaying Haymon’s fighters, giving them paychecks disproportionate with their popularity.
Andre Berto’s title defense against Carlos Quintana on HBO earlier this year had 3,508 people in attendance, but only 972 paid, bringing in $105,759 in ticket revenue, according to the Sports Business Journal. Berto and Quintana were paid a combined $1.25 million, with Berto earning more than $1 million.
But because HBO has ordained Berto a star, he is being paid like a star before truly becoming one.
He is good enough to have a world title, but he has not yet beaten competition that would prove he belongs among those at the top of the division. A win over either Mosley or Cotto would’ve placed him at, well, the level of Mosley and Cotto, just below that of Mayweather and Pacquiao.
Berto says he would prefer a Cotto fight. One imagines, however, that he would’ve preferred a fight with Mosley instead of a fight with Marcos Maidana or Mike Jones.
Sometimes being good ain’t good enough. Berto has held a world title for more than two years. He has defeated two competent former beltholders in Luis Collazo and Carlos Quintana, and a pair of smaller men in Steve Forbes and Juan Urango.
Berto’s critics are growing restless. They want to see him defend his welterweight title against the best welterweight challengers, not against junior welterweights or lower-tier 147-pounders. They want to see a fighter who is getting the HBO spotlight and HBO money show that he deserves both.
But Berto has an inflated standing perpetuated by HBO. After earning as much as he has earned, he feels that his financial rank is as important as his competitive rank.
Other fighters have taken short money as an investment in their own future. Zab Judah famously earned only $100,000 for his rematch with Cory Spinks, a fraction of what Spinks pulled in. Judah knocked out Spinks, won the welterweight championship and pulled in bigger paychecks afterward.
With an inflated sense of his own worth, Berto isn’t willing to do such a thing. He brushed aside a question about taking less now for more later.
Sometimes the promise of big money ain’t big enough.
This is the conundrum of Andre Berto.
These are the calculations and decisions that Berto must make.
These are the tenets of Berto-nomics: pump up your stock, hold on until you can sell high, and hope that such a strategy doesn’t lead to the marketing crashing down on you.
The 10 Count
1. There is good news, bad news, more bad news, and then more good news about the bantamweight tournament Showtime is doing.
The good news is that there’s a tournament between four of the better 118-pounders out there: Joseph Agbeko, Vic Darchinyan, Abner Mares and Yonnhy Perez.
The bad news is that there’s only one beltholder among the group in Perez, and that three of the other top names in or around the division won’t be a part of the tournament.
Fernando Montiel, who holds two world titles at 118, decided not to enter, and Nonito Donaire, who has recently fought at 115, subsequently made the same decision. Both are Top Rank fighters. Donaire wants to face Montiel, and they likely will do so, albeit outside of the bounds of the tournament. Another titlist, Anselmo Moreno, was not invited.
The other bad news is that the tournament will be single elimination, rather than a Super Six round-robin format like Showtime’s current super-middleweight tournament. This scribe believes the Super Six format is the best manner for deciding the best fighter, as the outcome isn’t impacted as much by who gets who first.
But that leads to more good news: this tournament will be over soon enough that the winner could then go on to face Donaire or Montiel or Moreno, a situation far different than the waiting game Lucian Bute is playing while the 168-pound tournament drags on.
The bantamweight tournament will probably begin this fall. The Twitter account for the Espinoza Boxing Club, which manages both Mares and Perez, noted that there would be a doubleheader on Showtime on Nov. 6 with Darchinyan-Mares and Agbeko-Perez.
2. A correction: What’s the writer’s equivalent for a slip of the tongue? Because I had one of those last week, inserting Carl Froch’s name where I meant to put Jean Pascal’s. As a result, I noted that boxing judge Jack Woodburn had scored the fight between Pascal and Chad Dawson at 108-101 favoring Froch – which would have been impressive, as Froch was an ocean away.
Woodburn’s judging was bad, but not THAT bad that he’d score a fight for someone not involved in it.
3. A couple miscellaneous tidbits from the Berto interview, conducted Aug. 13 in Montreal after the weigh-in for Jean Pascal vs. Chad Dawson…
- Regarding the situation in Haiti, where so, so many are still struggling to rebuild and survive following January’s earthquake: “I’m in touch with the foundation that we’re doing. It’s staying pretty active. We’re teaming up with a lot of other big organizations,” Berto said. “It’s a tough situation, knowing that the people in your homeland are still suffering while we’re over here doing pretty well.”
- Why was Berto was wearing a black Boston Red Sox hat? For the “B,” he said, for his last name.
- And what about the t-shirt reading “75 Percent Single”? Well… “I gotta let these girls know they still got a chance,” he joked.
4. Thinking Thrice:
“It doesn’t matter what people say,” a newspaper sports columnist once told me of the feedback he receives. “I know I’m right.”
Well, I’m not always right.
In last week’s 10 Count, I wrote of a bout between Josesito Lopez and Marvin Cordova on the Aug. 13 episode of ESPN2’s “Friday Night Fights.” It had seemed like a great fight when watched, on mute, from a sports bar – so great that six men at the bar actually delayed their trip to a Montreal strip club in favor of seeing the rest of Lopez-Cordova.
But when I watched the bout for a second time, this time with the volume on, what had seemed to be a serious candidate for “Fight of the Year” instead seemed “like just a very good fight, but nothing special,” I wrote.
I laid blame on the broadcast team of Joe Tessitore and Teddy Atlas, whom I accused of not getting into the fight until it was halfway over, mostly treating it as the preliminary bout it was.
On third thought – and after a third viewing – I was wrong.
First, however, some words from Tessitore: “It was a good fight, a spirited effort by both men,” Tessitore wrote in an e-mail that was especially polite, considering my criticism. Tessitore praised both the promoter and the matchmaker as brilliant for putting Lopez and Cordova in with each other. He said he loved the fight, but did not have the same superlative view of the bout that I did.
“I would tell you that sitting ringside, I have a pretty good idea of what is a tremendous, fight of the year type fight and what isn’t,” he wrote. “That Cordova-Lopez fight wasn’t even near the upper tier [of] best fights on Friday Night Fights this year, let alone a fight of the year candidate.”
Tessitore wasn’t dismissing the fight whatsoever. And he was absolutely right in his response.
I’d come back from the sports bar expecting to hear commentary that would sound like the ninth round of Arturo Gatti-Micky Ward 1. I didn’t. And the fight didn’t seem as amazing, though it was still very good. In a knee-jerk manner, I connected one observation with the other.
Lopez and Cordova indeed fought their rear ends off and laid some punishment into each other. That said, some of the shots that appeared to land exceptionally hard when I was watching with no sound did not seem to be as punishing when the sound was on. There were absolutely some good, spirited exchanges of heavy blows. And Tessitore and Atlas were indeed calling the action when those blows were being exchanged.
And while I’m on the topic of Tessitore and Atlas, those of us who cover sports rarely get the opportunity to praise a broadcast team whenever they do well – after all, it is the mistakes and the strange occurrences that stand out, as opposed to the jobs well done.
While I am outspoken with my preferences on what a boxing broadcast should sound like – in the same way that Jim Ross forever ingrained in me what a wrestling match should sound like – Tessitore and Atlas do good work on Friday Night Fights.
I do pick on Atlas regarding his breaking news and what I call his metaphorical wisdom. I occasionally transcribe Atlas’s strange metaphors because, well, they’re funny. How many other boxing commentators would ever utter this sentence: “Arnaoutis makes peanut butter sandwiches without the jelly”?
As for the times I’ve criticized Atlas for the way in which he’s supposedly broken news – such as with Michael Grant pulling out of a fight with Tomasz Adamek, a withdrawal that didn’t happen – I do so because Atlas has a prominent platform and a large audience, and I feel that journalistic sourcing standards should be met before he goes on the air with such information, much in the same way that ESPN’s print and online writers are required to do.
Teddy, if you’re reading and you disagree, please feel free to write in. I’m apparently not as stubborn and hardheaded as I think I am.
5. Moving on…
Do we hold boxers renowned for their trash talking to a lower standard than we do other fighters? Would we be okay with Manny Pacquiao saying some of the things that James Toney spews forth?
When James Toney says “David Haye, he’s gay” – as ESPN’s British website quoted him as saying – we seem to turn a blind eye and just smile, as if to acknowledge, “There goes Uncle James, spouting off again.”
We seem to love those athletes who lack filters, whether it is Toney in boxing or Ozzie Guillen in baseball. Toney has a right to say whatever he wants to say. But there’s no reason we should glorify him for immaturely deciding to use accusations of homosexuality as a form of insult.
6. Meanwhile, that same British ESPN website took Toney seriously when he joked on a conference call about coming into his UFC bout this Saturday against Randy Couture at a whopping 290 pounds.
“Booing ‘turns me on,’ claims 290lb James Toney,” the headline blared.
But while pictures of Toney training showed his usual ample stomach, he wasn’t anywhere near close to a Roy Nelson-style round mound of ground-and-pound.
If a 290-pound James Toney ever existed, he’d have to be rolled into the Octagon by a team of Oompa-Loompas like Violet Beauregarde in “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.”
7. In a year without a standout candidate for Fighter of the Year thanks to boxers getting in the ring so rarely, I think there’s an easy choice – should he win his next bout:
Sergio Martinez.
He became the lineal middleweight champion in April with his decision victory over Kelly Pavlik. If his next fight is in fact against Paul Williams – and if Martinez beats Williams – then he’s the clear-cut favorite for the honor.
8. Who else is even in the running? A conversation with a couple of other writers produced these thoughts:
- If Floyd Mayweather Jr. was fighting again this year, his win over Shane Mosley combined with another major victory would give him a high-quality 2010. Alas, Mayweather’s probably done on the year.
- Jean Pascal needs one more major win this year to tack on to his decision win over Chad Dawson. It’s unlikely, given that he just fought Aug. 14.
- Should Manny Pacquiao defeat Antonio Margarito this fall, that combined with his decision in March over Joshua Clottey probably wouldn’t be enough in voters’ eyes compared to what he did when he won the award in 2006, 2008 and 2009.
- Juan Manuel Lopez could be considered, suggested one person, should he add Rafael Marquez’s name to a year in which Lopez scored stoppages over Steven Luevano and Bernabe Concepcion. I’m not sold on that.
Last year was much easier. Pacquiao-Cotto decided the winner of the award. Pacquiao won the bout and the recognition.
9. Tomasz Adamek is not at all ready to challenge either Vitali or Wladimir Klitschko for the heavyweight throne. I expand on this on my fight report, filed from ringside following Adamek’s decision win over Michael Grant. Click here to read that article.
10. The most overplayed song in boxing is now Eminem’s “Not Afraid.”
June 5: Vanes Martirosyan walks to the ring to “Not Afraid.”
Aug. 14: Chad Dawson walks to the ring to “Not Afraid.”
Aug. 21: Jeremy Bryan opens up the Adamek-Grant pay-per-view by walking to the ring to the tune of – you guessed it – “Not Afraid.” And after Bryan wins by technical knockout, the song plays for a second time and then, when it’s over, starts again, meaning Eminem played a total of three times in less than 20 minutes.
Those, I’m afraid, are just three examples.
Still, this is easier to deal with than when the DJ played Vanilla Ice’s “Ice Ice Baby” and Eminem’s “My Name Is” back-to-back, back in the day, at my senior prom.
David P. Greisman is a member of the Boxing Writers Association of America. His weekly column, “Fighting Words,” appears every Monday on BoxingScene.com. He may be reached for questions and comments at fightingwords1@gmail.com
