So Andre Berto has an article about him in the current issue of ESPN the Magazine. It’s not online as far as I can tell but you can read a short excerpt or just buy it at the store. The author followed Berto around for 1,506 days and he was hand picked for the feature over Andre Dirrell and Andre Ward.
I think it is great for Boxing to have a young gun featured in the magazine, but why Berto? He is a nice guy, I have met him numerous times and I have seen him fight live. The 25 year old has a perfect record at 23-0 with 19 KO’s but I don’t see him as a KO artist. He has speed and great reflexes and can certainly pop but he does not strike me as the face of Boxing or the next “great” champion. I just don’t think he has a weight class to dominate.
His current division, Welterweight, features Margarito, Cotto, Cintron, Clottey and even Zab Judah to name a few. At 5’8″ his height could be an issue due to his style and the questions about his chin. Cotto is no giant but compare his rise to Berto and you see a huge contrast. By his 24th fight Cotto already had Jukko, Bazan, Maussa and Randall Bailey on his resume and Berto has Estrada and Forbes. They both have 2nd round TKO’s over the always-available Sammy Sparkman. I hope Berto does well and he becomes a household name in the sport but I get the feeling that if Margarito spoke English we would be seeing him on ESPN way ahead of Berto. You can see Berto soon when he takes on Louis Collazo (29-3, 14 KO’s) on January 17th on HBO.