In this video interview caught by FightHub, "Showtime" Shawn Porter answers questions about his April 22 fight against Andre Berto. Check out some excerpts of what he had to say...
On what will be the keys victory:
"Every time I see this fight in my head I feel good about it. I feel like my speed and my boxing ability is going to take care of the first half of that fight. I feel like once we get going and once we establish the pace of the fight, which is what we're gonna do, we're gonna establish when we're gonna fight, when we're not gonna - I want to completely control this fight, simple as that. And after that we'll start working in our feints and our head movement, start pressing him a little bit, and the fight will play out, man. It's gonna be beautiful. I know that much."
On if attacking the body will be a major focus:
"Yes sir. I think for him it definitely is. I've seen him in fights where he goes past the 5th and the 6th round and things start to fall apart for him. So if we can get to his body early - you see everything we do in this facility, this is not just because you guys are here - these guys work me almost to death. So we're ready for the 12 rounds +, and we're always ready to take more out of our guy's tank and have a lot more at the end. So that's the key."
On how his close relationship with his father working as his trainer has allowed him to be successful:
"I really think that there's an understanding that we both have. He tells me what to do and I listen and like he always says: as long as I listen everything will play out the way it's supposed to. And that's it. We have that one understanding and the rest just carries itself."
On how satisfying it would be for him to score a knockout on a body shot:
"I see myself hurting him to the body but I haven't seen myself stopping him. I can see him going down but I can't see him not getting up. Maybe that's too much respect for him, I know in the moment in the fight I'm going after this dude. I'm hitting him to the body, if he goes down and he gets up, I'm going back to the body - I'm stopping him, I'm doing what I gotta do. But right now I feel like he has the heart of a lion. He's Haitian, he carries that blood with him, he's proud of it and I respect that so I'm ready for a full fight."
On if he thinks he's peaking in his career while Berto is fading:
"I do. I think my coaches keep me at the peak...my dad keeps me where I need to be and a big part of that that we work on is the focus and the mentality approaching the fight as well so, I think where other guys lack I have it all. We work extremely hard in the PC, we go up to the mountains, we're in better conditioning than most guys. Those guys that are in great conditioning, we work on the mental fortitude just as much as we work on the physical. Those guys might not have it as much mentally as they do physically. So one way or another I'm always ahead of the game and that's the plan with this fight - to come out...to get ahead and stay ahead."
On if he's put the loss to Keith Thurman completely behind him:
"Nope. I'll be jogging, running on the track, like even today - we did 100 meter sprints. Coach Wade wanted me to do 18 seconds, was my pace. I probably was around 15 or so and he's telling me just relax and stay poised. A big part of that is when he says 'go' my mind completely turns onto the fight - and a lot of that sometimes happens to be the Thurman fight because that's the fight that got away from me by just that small of a margin. So it's not hard for me to think about it, it's not hard for me to let go, but oh yeah, it definitely pops up from time to time."