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Haitian-American Andre Berto boxing is on the rise

Sorry champs, but it's going to take a lot more than a potent mixture of big names to make Andre Berto think he can't end the new year with legitimate recognition as the toughest guy in the welterweight division.

Because heck, after a childhood and adolescence spent battling menacing members of his own family for a prime spot at the dinner table or a better vantage point for television viewing, the role call of elite 147-pounders hardly seems unconquerable.

"The whole household was rough," the 23-year-old Floridian said with a laugh, referring to his bruising upbringing complete with an ultimate fighter father, a state champion wrestler brother and even a punch-packing little sister.

"Every time we got in trouble, instead of sitting in timeout, we had to make sure and do 500 push-ups and 500 squats before we went to school. It was just that type of household. Everybody in the place grew up tough."

Now a Tyson-looking welterweight at a chiseled 5-foot-9, Berto exacted his latest measure of adulthood revenge on Dec. 9 in Little Rock, hammering veteran Miguel Figueroa into sixth-round surrender on the Taylor-Ouma title fight undercard.

The win was the 16th straight as a professional for the still-pristine Miami- born youngster, who's scored 14 knockouts overall and made Figueroa - a 32- fight pro with just one stoppage loss - his 12th consecutive inside-the- distance victim.

A violent endorsement for the non-Barney approach, perhaps.

"It teaches you a lot," he said. "More than anything, it teaches you just to respect it. A lot of kids grew up a lot different and we had the real rough end of it, but a lot of kids don't have their parents push them like my dad did. Later on, we learned to appreciate it and say thank you for it."

The unconventional methods pushed Berto into a ring as a pre-teen, where he immediately showed promise with state- and regional-level tournament victories across Florida. He made the U.S. national traveling team soon after, and by his own count had been to "21 or 22 different countries" by his senior year of high school.

His run as an amateur ended amid controversy, however, when a planned-for spot on the 2004 Olympic roster was sidetracked by a disqualification in a qualifying tournament. He found an alternate route to the Games by cashing in his dual citizenship - both parents were born in Haiti - for a berth on the sparsely populated Haitian team, but nonetheless came home from Athens with no medal.

"I can't really forget about it because it's something in my life that happened," he said. "So it's kind of weird and bittersweet, but at the same time it gave me the opportunity to represent them in the Olympic Games and I thank them for that. The people there are going through a lot of turmoil and it gave them a little shot of life for a while."

The loss in Greece quieted much of pre-Games buzz that had surrounded Berto, prompting many of the slew of promoters/managers courting him to conveniently change the terms of their previously discussed agreements. As a result, he decided to turn pro under a deal struck with Lou DiBella, who'd formerly worked with Bernard Hopkins and now promotes his middleweight title successor, Jermain Taylor.

"He was the only one that stayed on the same level with me." Berto said.

"Everyone else kind of changed their tune a little bit when we didn't come back with a medal and they tried to use that as some type of leverage. But he was the only one who stayed the same about everything. And I saw what he was doing with Jermain Taylor and he was somebody who I really wanted to be with."

Berto made his debut on a Taylor undercard in December 2004 when he stopped Michael Robinson in three rounds, then added three more wins - two by knockout - to the ledger by the end of that winter. He picked up five more early wins by the close of 2005, easily adapting to the pro ring a methodically aggressive style that was never fully rewarded in the frenetic, contact-over- power amateur game.

And with more, longer rounds to test out high-end gym schooling from fellow Floridians Winky Wright and Jeff Lacy, the Winter Haven resident expects to continue the successful run that yielded seven KO wins in 2006. His next fight, against a yet-to-be-named foe, is set for Feb. 17 at the Hammerstein Ballroom in New York.

"That's the way we train," he said. "That's the way I've always trained. That's the way I feel comfortable. Everybody was looking at the whole idea that I was young and I was fighting a more experienced guy (in Figueroa) and they wanted to see how I would handle it. But I knew within myself that he didn't know what he was getting himself into."

The Figueroa win yielded an outfitting contract with PRO-Keds for Berto and his entourage outside of the ring, while simultaneously earning a deal with HBO to televise the prospect's continued climb up the in-ring ladder. And, though he began 2007 outside the top 20 of all four major sanctioning bodies, he expects to end it with him either on the brink of - or in the midst of celebrating - a step to the top rung.

"It's going to depend on my performances," he said. "As long as I keep learning and looking better and better as I go, I think the opportunity is going to come closer. And I think, even if I'm predicting the end of 2007, it might come sooner. So we'll just stay focused and take each fight one at a time and see what we can get done. I think they're trying to throw me right into the lion pit. So we keep going one at a time and keep knocking them down.