Berto Returns To Challenge Guerrero For WBC Interim Crown

Former world welterweight champion Andre Berto is back in action! On November 24th, live from the Citizens Business Bank Arena in Ontario, California on HBO’s Boxing After Dark, hard hitter Berto ( 28-1-0 ) will face boxer Robert “The Ghost” Guerrero ( 30-1-1 ) over a 12 round contest.

This fight draws much intrigue to fans seeing Guerrero’s blazing hand speed and quality work-rate up against Berto’s strength and power. And although Guerrero has had more career wide success, many people, myself include,d do not choose him as the victor in this fight.

First off, this is only Guerrero’s second fight at Welterweight, and his highest weight before that was 130 lb, two weight classes lower than this. His first fight at the weight class was against a lesser opponent in Turkish knockout artist Selcuk Aydin, who gave him a tough fight but to Guerrero’s credit, couldn’t box him in and really get off ever.

Which is what Berto will need to do to win the WBC Interim-Title fight. But, in the other direction, you must see that Berto does what Aydin does to win fights, usually overpowering his opponents, except in the end, Berto seemingly does it much better.

Plus, as previously mentioned, Aydin wasn’t exactly outclassed by Guerrero; in fact, the Turkish fighter took a few rounds on my card.

Of course, by now Guerrero should be more settled to the weight as he has been there much longer. Also, that ring-rust from the 16 month layoff he was riding at the time surely affected him, so all these statistics simply draw even more interest to the contest.

If this excellent fight isn’t enough for you to tune in, the other two televised bouts in this well packaged tripleheader should! The co-feature has tricky boxer Richard Abril ( 17-3-1 ) facing undefeated power puncher Sharif Bogere ( 23-0-0 ) for Brandon Rios’s recently vacated WBA Lightweight title.

Abril should arguably already have this strap seeing how thoroughly he outboxed Rios last time out when they fought, but that disgraceful decision is not even worth discussion.

Bogere, on the other hand, is a well hyped ‘Shobox’-built prospect. He has that killer instinct that I love but needs a good test, which he is getting against Abril. This one is really tough to call.

The other fight on the card I want to mention features prospect Keith Thurman ( 18-0-0 ) against gritty Puerto Rican Contender Carlos Quintana ( 29-3-0 ), which opens the HBO Boxing After Dark televised bill.

Thurman is a young, heavily hyped prospect fighting between 147 lb and 154 lb, mostly against journeymen. Quintana is highly experienced and very tough and by far represents Thurman’s biggest challenge to date.

Thurman is in a challenge very comparable to the position Bogere will be in on November 24th as Quintana is fresh off a prospect upset over Deandre Latimore in his last fight and he should be prepped for war.

This looks like a top quality fight card produced by Oscar De La Hoya’s Golden Boy Promotions. Go see the fight live if you live in Ontario. Tickets will be on Ticketmaster soon, watch the card on either HBO’s Boxing or Boxnation UK or, if you can’t view at all, follow us on Saddoboxing.com for updates.