| 30 January 2012
Well, here's some bad news: Less than two weeks away from the highly anticipated rematch between Andre Berto and Victor Ortiz, the fight is in jeopardy after Berto suffered an arm injury. ESPN's Dan Rafael quotes sources saying that the full diagnosis awaits the results on am MRI but it "didn't sound good."
Whether you are a fan of either individual boxer or not, it's definitely a bummer if the fight gets pushed back or shelved. We picked the first Berto-Ortiz meeting as the 2011 Fight of the Year, and while we all know about the difficulty that rematches often have living up to fantastic first bouts, there was little reason to think that these guys weren't going to slug it out again.
Obviously the severity of the injury is going to play a big part in determining what happens with the fight and the rest of the card. Looking over the boxing calendar for the first half of 2012, there are a bunch of Saturdays in March and April without Showtime or HBO broadcasts scheduled, so if we're talking about a few weeks' recovery for Berto, simply pushing back the whole card a bit seems like a possibility.
If the arm is worse and Berto is out for months, it's not impossible for Showtime to go ahead with some boxing on the 11th. The network could pivot to a slightly later start and go with the Erislandy Lara-Ronald Hearns and Gary Russell-Dat Nguyen bouts. Hardcore fans would still watch it - at least I would.
The year in televised boxing is already off to a slow start, and this isn't going to help no matter how it plays out. Someone please tell Nonito Donaire to be careful over the next few days so he's ready to go this Saturday.
UPDATE: Steve Kim and Gabriel Montoya of MaxBoxing.com are reporting that Berto has a ruptured bicep and the fight is off. Cue Darth Vader: "Noooooooooooooooo!"
