Floyd Mayweather vs. Andre Berto: Top Storylines as Superfight Looms
Boxing's pound-for-pound king Floyd Mayweather Jr. and Andre Berto are just days from battling for the WBC and WBA Welterweight Championships at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas on Saturday, September 12, and here we'll take a look at the many storylines that will dominate fight week and fight night.
Mayweather (48-0, 26 KO) is boxing's gold standard when it comes to in-ring brilliance and out-of-ring marketing. He's universally recognized as the best fighter in the game today and quite possibly one of the best of all time.
He's stuck to his guns that he plans to retire after this fight, which is the last of his record six-fight deal signed in 2013 with Showtime/CBS, and many are disappointed that he chose a soft touch for his finale.
Berto (30-3, 23 KO) is a former welterweight titlist whose career was derailed by bad luck and a series of injuries. He's just 3-3 in his last six fights and considered a massive underdog by virtually everyone. A win would be a monumental upset.
But stranger things have happened, right?
Fight week is finally here, and we have you covered.
These are the hottest storylines for Mayweather vs. Berto!
Why Is This Fight Happening?
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This is the $64,000 question.
Mayweather easily vanquished his longtime rival Manny Pacquiao in boxing's richest prizefight this past May, and, in many ways, his supporters are right when they say that people would find some reason to complain no matter who he faced next.
It's just not possible to follow up a massive event that was nearly a decade in the making, between the two premier pugilists in the game for pound-for-pound supremacy, with anything that even compares.
So it appears that the Money Team decided to not even try.
Mayweather has battled the "ducker" or "cherry picker" label throughout his illustrious career (sometimes with but often without any merit) and hoped to put much of that to rest by finally dispensing the one man many believed he never wanted to face, Pacquiao.
Unfortunately, by selecting Berto over younger, better and more challenging options, Floyd has once again squarely placed his willingness to accept difficult challenges in the forefront of the conversation.
Berto is just 3-3 in his last six fights without a significant win in that stretch. He's lost to former Mayweather foes Robert Guerrero and Victor Ortiz and was knocked out by 10-loss gatekeeper Jesus Soto Karass in 2013.
And he got badly beaten up in all those losses.
His three most recent wins?
Jan Zaveck (in 2011), Steve Upsher Chambers and Josesito Lopez—he was struggling against the latter until what you could argue was a quick stoppage saved his bacon.
If that doesn't tell you all that you need to know about the potential competitiveness of this fight, then I really don't know what will.
Will Floyd Really Ride off into the Sunset?
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Mayweather has long maintained, and constantly reiterated throughout the promotion for this fight, that when the final bell rings on September 12 and the fists stop flying, he will ride off into the sunset and fight no more.
There seemed to be a certain logic to that statement before he decided to call it quits with Berto as the swan-song opponent of a career that will shortly land him in the Hall of Fame.
Mayweather has made a phenomenal amount of money in his 19-year career (much of which spent as boxing's undisputed best fighter and top draw) and has been Forbes magazine's top-paid athlete two years running.
That's even more impressive when you consider that he only spends 72 minutes per year of in-ring time fighting and doesn't sweeten his pot with money from endorsements. He has all his faculties intact, and his promotional and business ventures in the sport appear healthy.
In short, after beating Pacquiao in such decisive fashion, there really wasn't any reason for him to press on for what amounts to a glorified exhibition against Berto, unless he's not really planning on calling it quits.
With his expected win Saturday night, Mayweather would push his record to 49-0 and complete his historic contract with Showtime/CBS. For a smart money man like Floyd (there have been none better in the history of the business), that should ring dollar signs in his head.
The chance to pursue 50 wins without a blemish and command God knows how much money from whoever is willing to pay to put it on television?
That has Floyd written all over it.
Add to that the MGM Grand's new 20,000-seat arena scheduled for opening in April of next year and it seems highly likely this won't be the last we see Money Mayweather.
Does Floyd Come out More Aggressive?
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Mayweather has been frequently criticized for his safety-first style that has produced 48 mostly easy wins with No. 49 presumably just days away. He's among the very best defensive fighters ever seen in the sport (if not the best) and has used his tremendous reflexes and boxing IQ to craft a pugilistic puzzle no man has yet solved.
Berto won't be the first.
You can pretty well cash that check.
The question isn't the end result, which seems as close to certain as you'll find at this level and in this business, but how we ultimately arrive at the point where Mayweather gets his hand raised and gets to take pictures surrounded by gold belts and big men in TMT shirts is intriguing.
Mayweather certainly has the skill to box circles around Berto, but given the heavy criticism of this fight and of his defensive style, one has to wonder if the pound-for-pound king will be more aggressive and even (gasp) seek a knockout.
Berto is extremely easy to hit and has been known to cut and swell badly.
It's completely plausible that a Mayweather who is even just slightly more aggressive could cut up and batter Berto into submission with his precision punches. The guy places every shot exactly where it was intended (a testament to God-given talent and hard work), and that will be a huge problem for his slower, easy to hit opponent.
Will he go for it and try to make a statement?
Or will he be content to coast to a decision?
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How Many PPVs Will They Sell?
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There was a time when it seemed not just possible but even likely that the latest installment of the Mayweather show would find its way to network television on CBS.
Michael Woods of the Sweet Science reported in July that a source informed him that CBS was the likely destination for the fight, and that seemed to temper a bit of the heavy vitriol that greeted the pound-for-pound best fighter in the sport taking on a guy not even in the top 10 of his weight division.
But that didn't happen.
Mayweather vs. Berto (for some reason) ended up on Showtime pay-per-view for the ridiculous sticker price of $64.95 with cable providers tacking on an additional $10 for high definition. That means that in most cases you'll need to shell out $75 for a fight nobody demanded and very few want to see.
Pass.
It's safe to say that the record 4.4 million PPV buys snagged by Mayweather's decision over Pacquiao in May will not be challenged here.
Not a chance in hell.
Neither of Mayweather's two decision wins over Marcos Maidana eclipsed 1 million buys, and it would be truly shocking (or sad, take your pick) if Mayweather vs. Berto comes within sniffing distance of that number.
It might not be Pacquiao vs. Algieri bad, but it could well be close and definitely not on par with Floyd's previous PPV selling power.
And, for that, the fighters have themselves to blame.
Can Berto Pull a Buster Douglas?
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Mike Coppinger of USA Today reported in August that the MGM Grand (host of the fight) opened Berto as a 50-1 underdog at its sports book when the fight was announced.
Things haven't gotten a whole lot better since.
Odds Shark (as of this writing) currently lists Mayweather's line at minus-1850, which means you'd need to lay out $1,850 for every hundred dollars you hope to win back. Other sites aren't nearly as generous, listing Mayweather anywhere from minus-1850 to a whopping minus-5000.
Five grand to win back a hundred bucks?
Yikes.
The bottom line is that you'd need to lay out a massive amount of money in order to win back pennies.
Berto is a colossal underdog.
For context, Buster Douglas, whose 1990 upset of Mike Tyson to win the heavyweight championship is considered one of the biggest upsets in sports history, was a 42-1 underdog before he pulled off one of the greatest upsets in the history of professional sports.
Berto is on that same level right now.
Mayweather, like Tyson, has that air of invincibility about him.
He's the type of fighter whom you'll only believe can lose when it happens.
And he won't, at least not in this fight.
Kevin McRae is a member of the Boxing Writers Association of America. You can follow him on Twitter @McRaeWrites.
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