Businessman Berto refuses to budge on financial terms
Even Bob Arum thinks WBC welterweight champion Andre Berto is ‘overpricing’ himself.
The Top Rank promoter has confirmed that a fight is extraordinarily hard to make with Berto, echoing the opinions of others, because of the large sums of money to which he feels entitled.
Since becoming an HBO darling, Berto has made lucrative paydays, despite still having a small fan-base in the sport and arguably not deserving the paydays.
The announcement came to the fore as Arum was trying to arrange a prospective unifying title fight between Berto and his star fighter Miguel Cotto, the WBA junior middleweight champion.
Last week Berto publicly stated after his upcoming November 27 fight against Mexican Freddy Hernandez, he would like to take on a Top Rank heavy-hitter like Cotto or even Manny Pacquiao.
Arum said specifically that working out a deal for a Berto-Cotto fight would be very difficult since Berto is bound to request even more money than the large sums he’s been receiving from HBO for “ordinary
fights.”
"The problem with Berto is that he's a lovely kid and he's a good fighter, but he's a tulip, which means that his value has been set by what HBO is paying him for his fights,” Arum said. “And, like the
frenzy over tulips centuries ago in Holland, it's the same thing.”
Arum continued: “Berto shouldn't command anything like what HBO is paying him. Therefore, it makes it very, very difficult to make a big fight for Berto against somebody like a Miguel Cotto because the
kid wants to be paid more than he would get paid for ordinary fights. Therefore, he would be vastly overpaid. So it's very difficult."
In a title defence against Carlos Quintana on HBO, Berto made over a million dollars, even though the event had just over 3,500 people in attendance and a miserable 972 actually paid for tickets (the rest
were promotional hand-outs). Ticket revenue from the event barely surpassed $100,000.
At one time Berto was allegedly set to fight “Sugar” Shane Mosley, but negotiations fell through due to financial disagreement. Berto was asking for a 50-50 purse split with Mosley, who has established
himself with a resume littered with all-time greats.
Berto said on the matter: “Shane Mosley, of course he fought Floyd [Mayweather], his stock dropped [in defeat] […] Me coming off a win [against Quintana], I think it’s only right that we go 50-50. I don’t
really think most people even want to see him fight now. I think it’s totally right to do it that way.”
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