Andre Berto and Victor Ortiz held a conference call yesterday for their anticipated February 11 rematch to what many consider the 2011 Fight of the Year. Like that aforementioned battle, this fight is also a crossroads fight. The winner likely goes on the another lucrative fight (like Ortiz got with Floyd Mayweather), and the loser goes in search for an opportunity to make a big rebuilding statement. In an interesting twist, both guys have agreed to blood and urine testing for this bout.
VICTOR ORTIZ
Once again, I’m counted out by Berto’s team. To me it’s perfectly fine. I don’t care. I’m going to show him why I beat him the first time. It’s Berto’s second chance, not mine. What do I lose? Nothing. At the end of the day it’s going to be a great fight. Berto is a good fighter, but I never saw him as great, not even when I was at 140 and I was coming up to challenge him, which is why I challenged him. Don’t get me wrong, he’s a dangerous fighter but I don’t fear him. I have no respect for him, I’m not scared of him, nothing like that. At the end of the day I will win this once again.
CHANGES FROM THE FIRST FIGHT
I’ve been working hard and keeping it positive. There are no worries in the world right about now, and Berto is certainly not one of them. At the same time I know I have to be tremendously tough for this guy, both in and out of the ring. I’m not a guy who has to sit there and run his mouth. The thing is, at the end of the day, the boxing gloves will do the talking. Apparently Berto has a chip on his shoulder. Well I have a few chips on my shoulder due to the first Berto fight. It didn’t end the way I wanted it to end and my last fight wasn’t the greatest, so my roller coaster is re-launching right now. I want to climax. I’m nowhere near ready to pull back. Not now or in the near future. It’s going to be a great fight, I will be victorious once again and I will not take no for an answer.
ANDRE BERTO
ON REBOUDING FROM THE ORTIZ LOSS WITH A KNOCKOUT WIN OVER JAN ZAVECK
I think it was tremendously important after you go through the situations that I went through not to dwell on it for too long but to just jump back in action, and that’s what I did. I just wanted to take a little time off and put this fight together for me and I jumped right back into action.
It definitely helped, but at the end of the day I know I can fight. If I had a bad night or if you have a bad day at the gym, at the end of the day you know you’re going to be able to know how to fight.
MENTALLY PUTTING THE ORTIZ LOSS BEHIND HIM
Of course. It played with my mind a bit. You get to a point where I think any fighter would be affected by that, but you just brush it off, get back on your feet and get back in there and that’s what I did.
In my last fight I went in there like nothing happened. I went in there and went straight to work like nothing happened at all. At the end of the day, you like to be realistic. That loss put a lot of different things in perspective. It made me get back and work hard and made me understand what kind of team and what type of family I have around me. They were very supportive. If I’m in this boxing thing or not, I still have that love from my family and my friends. Like I said, I have that support so I’m good.
IMPROVING STAMINA
I believe when we trained for that fight I don’t think we trained like we were supposed to. I believe that’s something that fighters go through. You get in a situation where you have a lot of success and you stay in your own little circle, your own little box instead of trying to look out and find the best situations for you. I think I suffer from that because after that fight I found out I was anemic and I had to really reach out to find some help with that because it got to be pretty serious. I learned I needed to take a lot better care of my body.
We’re working hard and having our doctors checking on me to make sure my levels are up and making sure I’m getting all my vitamins that I need to continue to push to have the best training sessions. Before, we were so old school in everything. We didn’t take vitamins or protein shakes or none of that, it was just hard work, but anybody knows that if you’re a world-class athlete you have to train and you have to take care of your body like you are a world-class athlete. That’s something that we’re really getting into, and we’re trying to take all the right precautions now.
Repeat or Revenge: Ortiz vs. Berto II is the highly anticipated 12-round welterweight rematch of USA Today and Ring Magazine’s 2011 Fight of the Year between former World Champions “Vicious” Victor Ortiz and Andre Berto which will take place Saturday, Feb. 11 at the MGM Grand Garden Arena in Las Vegas, Nev. The co-featured fights will see top contenders Erislandy Lara and Ronald Hearns square off and 2011 “Prospect of the Year” Gary Russell Jr. take on Dat Nguyen. The event is promoted by Golden Boy Promotions and DiBella Entertainment and will air live on SHOWTIME at 9:00 p.m. ET/PT (delayed on the west coast). A special three-fight undercard telecast will air live on SHOWTIME EXTREME® beginning at 7:00 p.m. ET/PT (delayed on the west coast).
Tickets, priced at $300, $150, $100 and $50, are available at all Las Vegas Ticketmaster locations (select Smith’s Food and Drug Centers and Ritmo Latino). Ticket sales are limited to eight per person. To charge by phone with a major credit card, call Ticketmaster at (800) 745-3000. Tickets also are available for purchase atwww.mgmgrand.com or www.ticketmaster.com.
Beats, Boxing and Mayhem 