Pros For a long time, he was able to get very good paydays on HBO just to fight handpicked opponents. Cons His matchmaking did not really help him in the long term. It just didn't seem to prepare him for tough fights. It's the reason I was one of the few to pick Ortiz in his fight against Berto. Prior to that fight, Ortiz had already fought Maidana, Peterson, Campbell & experienced the ups & downs of being a professional fighter. Berto is not shot. It's disturbing that I'm on a boxing forum with people who don't know the game. You got a guy who was never as good a people thought who just started fighting live opponents a couple years ago. The thing is he's at a point in his career where he has to. He's shown that he will have a problem with any prime, C-Level fighter. Live, tough guys, that can take a punch.
He needs to go back to the drawing board and re-learn everything, he has speed and power but his workrate and defense is terrible, I think hes just used to blasting guys out with uppercuts because sometimes he lands one then admires it for a second then gets hit back This loss will be tough on him will make him or break him
He can't re-learn things at this stage of his career. His footwork sucks and he's got a really bad habit of keeping his left down. That's why he's getting hit with so many punches. Berto was never an elite fighter and he was always just one step below good. Karass has been beaten by B-level fights and if Berto can't handle a guy like that, he's going to be a gatekeeper.
We all know he is gonna continue on with his career. From a craft perspective, the logical move would be to go on the "Hasim Rahman" plan. I call it the "Rahman" plan because he did it all the time. This is after you have a major loss, you spend the year taking about 4 -5 fights fighting club fighters. He would also have plenty of time to learn from Virgil Hunter and get some of his confidence back. It worked for Malignaggi after the Khan loss, who did his own variation of it. However, because boxing is a business, this won't happen. Although Berto has lost 3 of his last 4, he still has somewhat of a "name." Team Berto will still only fight once or twice a year and will want to make the most money as possible. Maybe he should fight Matthew Hatton in his next fight. After that, look at fights like Judah, Mosley, Malignaggi, etc. In fact all these familiar names (berto, judah, mosley, malignaggi) probably should just take turns fighting each other & make money together. After the round robin is over just retire all at once.
Sure he may have been protected from dangerous top 10 WW's but he was on a good start to his career before the Ortiz fight. Say what you want, but beating Forbes, Collazo (controversial), Urango, and Quintana in consecutive fights is a nice little run. Stopping Zaveck on cuts when nobody wanted to face him at that time is an achievement too. Berto, even in his victories, always showed the weaknesses which later proved to be very costly and now is all he will be remembered for.
I think it was 1.1 million. But still... I always use this as an example and this fight is the classic case of shitty overpaid American TV fights. Could have made an actually special fight with that kind of money.
Before you become an ATG it's all about the $$$$. Berto did an excellent job at matchmaking making over 1m a fight so don't know what you're talking about.
