This past week saw Floyd Mayweather Jr announced his opponent for Sept. 12 as former WBC World Welterweight and current interim WBA Welterweight champion Andre Berto. What you heard next was a collective groan from the boxing world, as the match is not considered all that competitive or appealing.
And it looks like the sportsbooks agree, as Mayweather is coming in as a heavy (-3000) favorite over Berto, who is coming back at (+1500). Berto is a terrific boxer who has put together a strong (30-3) overall record as a pro and he has won a world championship and held onto it for nearly three years through multiple title defenses, so it is not meant as a slight or as a disrespect to Berto. If he was offered the fight he had to take it, so this is not his fault.
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But it is the fault of Mayweather and his “Money Team”. They are hyping this as Mayweather’s last fight before he walks off into retirement, and after the last fight with Manny Pacquiao turned into an expensive sham, there was some hope that Mayweather would want to go out on a high note and take on some sort of challenge. Brtian’s Amir Khan has been begging for the fight for the past several years, and though he is not the perfect opponent, Mayweather fighting Khan in a stadium in England would have been very lucrative and it would have been Floyd stepping out of his comfort zone. The site for the Andre Berto fight will be the MGM Grand, which is the only place Floyd has fought since 2006.
Mayweather is just going through the motions at this point. He is going to make a lot less money for this fight than he made for his last fight with Pacquiao, so why bother? Consider the fight isn’t getting the usual hype, as it has only recently been confirmed and the fight is basically a month away. Every chance Mayweather had to do sometyhing dramatic and noteworthy. he took the easy way out. Somewhere in all of this, Andre Berto is training for the biggest fight of his life, and he is just hoping that MAyweather is actually looking past him as much as it appears.
