“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).
Alejandro Luna and Raul Marquez to Call the Action from Ringside
Saturday, Feb. 11, Live at 9 p.m. ET/PT
From The MGM Grand Garden Arena in Las Vegas, Nev.
NEW YORK (Jan. 25, 2012)—SHOWTIME® Sports will offer secondary audio programming (SAP) in Spanish for the upcoming Victor Ortiz-Andre Berto II blockbuster on Saturday, Feb. 11, live on SHOWTIME (9 p.m. ET/PT, delayed on the West Coast), from the MGM Grand Garden Arena in Las Vegas. Alejando Luna will call the play-by-play action and Raul Marquez will serve as color commentator for the SAP telecast.
Luna is well known in the Spanish-language sports community as the on-air host for Fox Sports en Espanol’s coverage of Mexican Soccer, Copa Santander Libertadores and Copa Nissan Sudamericana. Luna also serves as Fox Sports en Espanol’s play-by-play announcer for the Italian Serie A and UEFA Champions League.
Marquez was a representative for the 1992 U.S. Olympic boxing team in Barcelona, Spain and is a former International Boxing Federation (IBF) junior middleweight champion. He is currently a commentator for various Spanish boxing broadcasts and helps train his son, Arturo Marquez, an amateur boxer and Golden Gloves champion.
Ten months after their classic slugfest that was named 2011 “Fight of the Year” (USA Today, Ring Magazine), former World Champions Ortiz (29-3-2, 22 KO’s), of Ventura, Calif., and Berto (28-1, 22 KO’s), of Winter Haven, Fla., will square off again. The eagerly awaited 12-round fight is a rematch of a fiercely contested, multiple-knockdown affair on April 16, 2011, that Ortiz won by a unanimous decision (114-112, 114-111 and 115-110) while capturing Berto’s World Boxing Council (WBC) 147-pound title. Both fighters were knocked down twice in the fight, with Berto being dropped in the first, Ortiz going down a round later and each of them hitting the deck in a wild sixth round that many called the “Round of the Year” for 2011.
“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 event is promoted by Golden Boy Promotions and DiBella Entertainment. It will air live on SHOWTIME Championship Boxing at 9:00 p.m. ET/PT (delayed on the west coast). A special three-fight undercard 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 on sale and 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 at www.mgmgrand.com or www.ticketmaster.com.
As in September, I once again ran out of gas in the 10th & 11th championship rounds of October & November with this column, but I recovered to complete them and will unleash a few more flurries to close out the 12th and final round.
In the first week of October, Hassan N’Dam won a UD over Curtis Stevens in an eliminator for the right to challenge Jermaine Taylor who defeated aging Sam Soliman to regain the IBF Middleweight title. How Taylor even earned this title shot is another story altogether, but it is all irrelevant as he is now the champion. However he will not have too much time to savor his victory as he has assault and battery charges pending against him and an upcoming court fight that may turn out to be the toughest fight of his life, just when things started to look up for him in boxing, we wish him luck.
