Tweet
On Monday morning, Berto wrote the following on Twitter: “R.I.P to Edwin Valero after killing his wife yesterday he just killed himself in jail today. WOW women are a [expletive] boy RIP E.V.”
The backlash against Berto, the World Boxing Council welterweight champion, was fast and furious and it wasn’t long before he deleted the Tweet and offered condolences to Valero and Viera and their families.
His comment was clearly in outrageously bad taste, particularly when referring to a murder victim.
Give Berto credit, though, for understanding that. His mother and sisters were angry at him, but he realized he had gone over the edge.
He spoke to Yahoo! Sports by telephone late Monday afternoon and said at the time he made the post, he had problems with his girlfriend and had just broken up.
“The comment was made, pretty much, in kind of the heat of a personal frustration for myself and what I was going through in my personal life with my girlfriend,” Berto said. “That comment wasn’t directed toward Jennifer at all. It was said out of frustration and I didn’t mean it that way at all. It wasn’t intentional.
“Everybody who knows me or who has been around me knows I have the utmost respect for women in general. That’s just me, that’s just my morals, that’s the way I was raised. This was a tragic situation. Someone got killed. Why would anyone make a derogatory comment?”
Berto said he learned a deep lesson and will think before he writes in the future. He’s been a good ambassador for boxing and doesn’t deserve to be turned into a villain because of one clearly inappropriate, unacceptable comment.
The backlash against Berto, the World Boxing Council welterweight champion, was fast and furious and it wasn’t long before he deleted the Tweet and offered condolences to Valero and Viera and their families.
His comment was clearly in outrageously bad taste, particularly when referring to a murder victim.
Give Berto credit, though, for understanding that. His mother and sisters were angry at him, but he realized he had gone over the edge.
He spoke to Yahoo! Sports by telephone late Monday afternoon and said at the time he made the post, he had problems with his girlfriend and had just broken up.
“The comment was made, pretty much, in kind of the heat of a personal frustration for myself and what I was going through in my personal life with my girlfriend,” Berto said. “That comment wasn’t directed toward Jennifer at all. It was said out of frustration and I didn’t mean it that way at all. It wasn’t intentional.
“Everybody who knows me or who has been around me knows I have the utmost respect for women in general. That’s just me, that’s just my morals, that’s the way I was raised. This was a tragic situation. Someone got killed. Why would anyone make a derogatory comment?”
Berto said he learned a deep lesson and will think before he writes in the future. He’s been a good ambassador for boxing and doesn’t deserve to be turned into a villain because of one clearly inappropriate, unacceptable comment.
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