Andre Berto Next Fight: Best Options for the Beast After Loss to Mayweather

Andre Berto better have enjoyed his moment in the spotlight in his defeat to Floyd Mayweather Jr. on Saturday. His career may never reach the same heights as it did Saturday night in Las Vegas.

Mayweather won in convincing fashion, scoring 117-111, 118-110 and 120-108, per Showtime Sports.

"He was difficult to hold onto and was slippery, very slippery," Berto said of the unbeaten champion, per Yahoo Sports' Kevin Iole. "Like I said, experience played a big part. I tried to use my speed, but he was using little things, smart things, to get me off my rhythm. I was coming, but he was crafty. He had a lot of speed and is very crafty."

ESPN's Skip Bayless seemed to think Berto at least didn't take a high volume of significant offense from Mayweather:

You have to give this to Berto: He attempted to take the fight to Mayweather and threw 100 percent of himself into getting the win. Unfortunately for Berto, his best wasn't anywhere near good enough to hand Mayweather the first professional loss of his career.

It's impossible to say with 100 percent certainty Berto will fail to get anything close to a fight of this magnitude in the future, but that feels a pretty safe bet. Few consider Berto among the elite welterweights in the world, and that's not going to change after he lost to Mayweather.

What makes projecting Berto's future so difficult is that this fight was so far above where he stood in the boxing hierarchy that it's tough to tell what the residual impact will be. As ESPN.com's Dan Rafael wrote in August, it wasn't like Mayweather selected Berto entirely on merit:

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Mayweather claimed he picked Berto because he makes exciting fights. He has been in several good scraps. This is true. But this fight isn't about true competition. This is about Mayweather supposedly walking away from boxing with a perfect record without taking much of a chance in a not-so-grand finale. As usual, Mayweather had his talking points down pat.

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The fight with Berto is an obvious mismatch for which at least one online gambling site has Berto as a 100-to-1 underdog. Buster Douglas was only 42-to-1 against Mike Tyson (and that was on HBO, not on pay-per-view).

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Robert Guerrero might be a good example to follow when attempting to envision where Berto goes from here.

Coincidentally, Guerrero was fresh off a unanimous-decision victory over Berto when he took on Mayweather. One lopsided defeat later, Guerrero was in need of a win in his next bout, which is where Yoshihiro Kamegai came in.

After dispatching of Kamegai, "The Ghost" then received a more prominent matchup, appearing on the first episode of NBC's Premier Boxing Champions in a loss to Keith Thurman.

Much like Guerrero, Berto needs an opponent against whom he can look strong after getting thoroughly outclassed by Mayweather.

Following Saturday night, Berto is 3-4 in his last seven fights. You could also argue he hasn't looked as good in the ring ever since his shoulder surgery in August 2013.

There's a reason the Mayweather camp went into overdrive to try and make Berto look like a credible challenger.

With a win, Berto could've potentially commanded the likes of Thurman, Timothy Bradley, Amir Khan, Manny Pacquiao or Shawn Porter. Instead, he's likely looking at one or two more fights against lesser-statured opponents before he climbs his way up the welterweight ladder again.

Even stringing a few wins together might not be enough for Berto to become a serious challenger in the welterweight division. He has a tendency to produce exciting fights, but that only counts for so much when the general boxing public remains skeptical about a fighter's talent.

It is bound to be some time before Berto is headlining a major card—if you ever see it again at all.