Eloy Perez, as you can see from that clip, is exactly like Thomas Hearns! Not really. I was just keeping things in the style of the headline, a reference to some of the other comparisons that floated around over the weekend. But that the five-kayo junior lightweight prospect showed that kind of power against Daniel Jiminez — who went 12 rounds before succumbing to Roman Martinez, a true power puncher — was a bit of a shocker. The finish is one of the better of 2011, so check it out.
There’s a lot of Andre Berto in this edition of Weekend Afterthoughts, but there’s also some 24/7 Mayweather/Ortiz, some Vic Darchinyan and some other stuff, too. Luxuriate in the Berto-osity, or else read the other tidbits.
- Berto’s performance. The welterweight, to put it in the words of friend of the site Pretty Toney, is an A+ athlete with C+ boxing skills. We know he can fight more cautiously than he did over the weekend against Jan Zaveck, because we have seen him do it against Juan Urango, like his trainer Dan Morgan said. But it’s not simply a matter of him choosing to square up and abandon boxing skills to slug it out. You can be a seek-and-destroy type without squaring up. And it’s true that he tuned Morgan out somewhat Saturday. Kudos to Morgan for getting him this far, but Berto has more potential than he’s shown, and maybe it’s time for him to bring in a new voice for the corner.
- Next for Berto. Berto’s team wants “big names,” whatever that means. It’s not clear if Randall Bailey will be next, even though he’s in line from an alphabet belt standpoint, and there were some reports that Bailey didn’t look his usual destructive self on the undercard of Berto-Zaveck. I know I’m still interested in Berto-Victor Ortiz II, even if as expected Ortiz loses to Floyd Mayweather. Maybe, too, Berto could figure in to a fight with Mayweather or Manny Pacquiao down the line, should he beat Ortiz in a rematch — although Berto’s ties to adviser Al Haymon are problematic on bouth counts, with Pacquiao promoter Bob Arum hating Haymon and Mayweather sharing Haymon as an adviser and Haymon fighters never face each other.
- Head butt, or punch? I still haven’t seen a replay that makes it clear what caused the Zaveck cuts that led to the fight’s stoppage, but Kevin Iole noticed a bit of valid anecdotal evidence: Zaveck didn’t complain about a head butt. That means either he doesn’t know what it was, or he’s not the complaining type, or he knows it wasn’t a butt, but even the non-complaining types of boxers complain about stoppages like that where a fight is a TKO when they don’t think it should be because a cut came from a foul. It’d be nice for us to hear from the Zaveck camp a bit more overall, on this point and the next.
- Al Haymon hysteria, continued. Some people actually made the case that the fight was stopped prematurely because the Haymon-advised Berto was “supposed to” win. So now Haymon — who already controls HBO, Showtime (for a spell) and ringside judges who try to give his fighters wins they don’t deserve (how’d he screw that one up for Berto-Ortiz I, anyhow? I bet a few judges are sleeping with the fishes after that one) — has gotten to the ringside doctors, too? But wait! Those same some people later said that they believe it was Zaveck’s corner that wanted the fight stopped. Since the earlier assessment of Berto as the fighter who was “supposed to” win wasn’t retracted, that must mean Haymon has now added to his ring of corruption the corners of opposing fighters! This man is extraordinary. When his history is written, Haymon will have put Boss Tweed to shame.
- HBO’s commentary. The HBO team, particularly Max Kellerman, went a little insane at times on Saturday. What stands out the most is Kellerman comparing Berto to Meldrick Taylor. This trope — overly generous comparisons — has been the biggest knock on Kellerman’s commentary tenure at HBO, for me. I like him overall, but he gets carried away with that. Some of this could be mitigated some if he just made clear that the comparisons were about aspects of two fighters, rather than a fighter-to-fighter comparison; it’s a common distraction in discourse, when one party makes a comparison to characteristics of things and is thought to be saying those two things are equal. As for Kellerman’s commentary at the end about Haymon and Gary Russell, Jr. doing an eight-round fight: One Iole “boxing source” (aargh) said that the new boss at HBO Sports, Michael Lombardo, is “clearing out all the unacceptable deals that were made by the previous regime.” But Kellerman said the agreement to turn Russell’s fight into an eight-rounder was a last-minute thing. If that’s the case, and Lombardo’s intentions are those stated by the “boxing source,” then Lombardo could’ve put his foot down right then. He didn’t.
- Russell’s health. A previously-injured hand led to the eight-rounder against Leolino Miranda, but Russell’s team is now saying he had an injured shoulder. At this point, at such a young age, health issues are the greatest threat to Russell’s future status as a world-class fighter, it would seem.
- Ratings. As a new member of the Ring Ratings Advisory Panel, t’s been enlightening to recommend divisional ratings changes on the front end rather than scrutinize them afterward. This week around, every change they made reflected my recommendations (not that they rated everyone that way because of my recommendations). Except one. I had struggled with whether to move #3 Berto above #2 Ortiz after this win. I ultimately went with “yes.” Indeed, Ortiz owns a win over Berto. But Berto has a much deeper resume at welterweight, especially now with the win over Zaveck. My belief was that Berto’s overall resume overcame that one narrow loss to Ortiz. But I’m wondering what you guys think.
- 24/7 Mayweather/Ortiz. Friends of the site Eric Raskin and David P. Greisman have already said a lot of the things I would’ve about the latest episode: Mayweather has a gambling problem, Piers Morgan learned the dangers of pre-taped interviews, Ortiz abused the word “literally,” Mayweather has joined Ortiz in his time-bending qualities with “I’ma son him.” A few of my own: Mayweather thinks HBO is screwing the pooch by focusing on Ortiz’ back story so much, but I disagree. Mayweather can be entertaining — his quip about Ortiz looking up to Oscar De La Hoya was pretty funny — but that “money as phone” gag with 50 Cent wasn’t worth the time spent on it and overall his half of the show wasn’t as good as Ortiz’. The segment where Ortiz talked about covering up his tattoo to spite his father was worth it alone; also enjoyable was the segment where De La Hoya admitted he was “done” as a fighter by the time he fought Mayweather. A lot of people don’t like Ortiz, and I get it. But in a weird sort of inverse way to Mayweather, the ways in which you can either love Ortiz or hate him undeniably make him a compelling character.
- Humberto Soto and Vic Darchinyan clips. Just like it sounds. Check them out below. Soto looks like he can be a factor at junior welterweight after battering Jose Alfaro around, although winning the fight that way — a cut that clearly came from a head butt led to a bizarre TKO stoppage — took some of the juice out of it. And Darchinyan just keeps plugging along, although this weekend he did it against Evans Mbamba in Armenia before a reportedly sold out crowd of 12,000 that included the president. Neat! He’s talked about going to junior featherweight, but I still want to see him get a rematch with the winner of Abner Mares-Joseph Agbeko II.
