OSCAR AS THE UNDERDOG

September 10, 2004 - by Ron Borges

Oscar De La Hoya laughed as only an underedog with bite can when he heard the news from London this week.

The five-time world champion by now not only understood but had embraced the idea of being an underdog for the first time since he left the streets of East L.A. He has made the thought a part of his armor, a tool to use when the weather is hot and his body begins to complain about another day of sparring in a garage gym in the mountains of Big Bear, Calif. when it could just as easily be sitting by a pool in Beverly Hills or San Juan or anywhere else De La Hoya chose to go.

On such days, as a multi-millionaire prepares to face undisputed middleweight champion Bernard Hopkins next weekend in Las Vegas, De La Hoya thinks not about why he is bothering to accept this challenge so few seem to feel he will conquor but rather about what the world is saying of him now, after all he has accomplished in boxing. He thinks of it and pushes on.

But some things, frankly, are too absurd to be used as anything but a moment of levity in an otherwise serious-minded endeavor.

"I'm 6-to-1? Underdog?," De La Hoya said, when told how long the odds were against him in English betting parlors. "Oh, wow! A lot of people are going to lose a lot of money."

Had some people said that when facing such great odds it would have sounded like a young lad whistling past a graveyard while gazing over his shoulder wide-eyed at the ghosts he was passing. But De La Hoya is no lad any more and no one who is whistling by any graveyard. Nor does he believe he is going into one in a week when he walks to the ring at the MGM Grand Garden Arena to face a man who is not only bigger than he is but also one who has not lost a fight in 11 years.

The last time anyone beat Hopkins (and it took Roy Jones, Jr. to do it), Oscar De La Hoya had just won his seventh professional fight, stopping someone named Frankie Avelar in four rounds. It would be nearly a year before the then 130-pound De La Hoya would fight for his first world title, a stoppage of Jimmi Bredhal for the WBO junior lightweight championship. By that time, Hopkins had been a middleweight for six years.

As the seasons passed, De La Hoya would win titles at 130, 135, 142, 147, 154 and, in a sense, 160 (although the WBO title Felix Sturn grudgingly surrendered to him in his last fight is suspect both by decision and by the fact it has never been around Hopkins' waist). While all that was going on Hopkins would win back the IBF portion of the middleweight title 18 months after losing to Jones and go on to defend it, and various other forms of the 160-pound championship, a record 18 times.

Although he did not have his best night himself in defeating Robert Allen on the same card where De La Hoya bested Sturn by a nose, Hopkins is so clearly the recognized middleweight champion that not even as powerful a box office draw as De La Hoya could make the case that he yet shares any portion of that championship.

"I'm extremely excited facing Bernard Hopkins, the undisputed champion," De La Hoya said. "He is a challenge like no other. This is the fight of my life. Every time I go into that gym it's like i'm leaving a part of me in there. I'm working as hard as I can. This is my last big hurrah. We at Golden Bear (Promotions, the company he founded to promote his own and others fights) are winding down."

Whether that is true or not remains to be seen because win or lose De La Hoya still has unfinished business out there with Felix Trinidad and Shane Mosley, the only fighters who hold victories over him, although Trinidad's is so tainted as to be ridiculous and the second of Mosley's wins could be argued either way as well.

Yet none of them is on The Underdog's mind today. All his thoughts, though none of his fears, are focused on Hopkins, a 39-year-old boxer who is as hard as a steel plate and about as inviting to have swinging at you.

No one in the world would argue who is the bigger man. Few would argue who is the tougher man. Some might dispute who is the slicker man but not even that has convinced many wise guys that De La Hoya has a chance against Hopkins next week.

Yet De La Hoya, a man who doesn't need the money or the headaches at this stage of his career, has accepted this challenge because, he says, he wants to make history. He wants to win six legitimate world titles in six legitimate weight classes. He wants to face the biggest challenge, both literally and physically, that he can find, although those who criticize him argue it's because he got boxed in after Trinidad and Mosley both refused his purse offers for a rematch.

Whatever the reason he's in the ring with Hopkins next weekend, De La Hoya understands that few people in the public believe in him for the first time since he went to the Olympic Games in Barcelona and came home with a gold medal. In fact, when he tries to think back to the last time he was in this kind of predicament in a boxing ring, the memory is from so long ago it's all a hazy maze of recollections.

"I was 16 years old," De La Hoya recalled. "I was fighting the Cuban. He was about 6-2, 6-3. A five-time world champion. Nobody gave me a chance because I was so young but I was very determined to prove everybody wrong. I feel the same way for this fight."

That is really all he has left to prove to anyone. To prove them wrong. Long ago De La Hoya proved his skill and his courage and his willingness to fight every top opponent of his era. Genaro Hernandez. Julio Cesar Chavez. Pernell Whitaker. Ike Quartey. Fernando Vargas. Trinidad, Mosley twice. Now Hopkins. Who did he miss?

Some of those guys he was fortunate to catch on the downside but De La Hoya didn't create the calendar. Others he fought close and got off the deck to beat, like Quartey. Still others he overwhelmed when many thought he might lose, like Vargas. A few he fought so close people still argue over the decisions, like Trinidad and the second Mosley fight. But regardless of the opponent or the outcome, never once was De La Hoya the underdog, not even after Mosley clearly beat him in the final two rounds of their first fight to give him his first true defeat as a professional.

Never until now has the wagering public doubted Ded La Hoya. Never until a former 130-pound champion decided to get in with a guy who has been a true middleweight since the first professional fight of his life. In fact, that night, which was a losing one for Hopkins, he was a light heavyweight.

That size and strength advantage is not debateable. It is a fact, just as Hopkins' long string of victories are a fact. So is De La Hoya's uncomfortable status as an underdog for the first time in his boxing life since he saw the tall Cuban whose name he can no longer remember in the corner across from him.

De La Hoya doesn't deny any of this. He does not try to deny the obvious. He understands why so many feel this time he will lose. He simply doesn't agree with any of them.

"It doesn't get any bigger than this," De La Hoya said. "This is a dangerous fight. He's been a bully for such a long time and that gets me really pumped up. I've been taking that energy and using it. I am going to beat this guy."

How will he do it? He talks about how his left hand will be the key, both his jab and left uppercuts and hooks. Later he says he has seen Hopkins is vulnerable to right hands, the punch Jones most often used to stop him in his tracks so long ago when ever Hopkins tried to wade inside and bully him as he has done to so many other opponents both before and after his last defeat.

But while De La Hoya knows he will have to use his fists to win, talk of left hands and right hands are all a con. The way he beats Hopkins, if he indeed does, is with his feet and his head. De La Hoya knows he cannot lay on the inside with Hopkins even when he is tired because the old Philadelphia Warrior is too slick and dangerous on the inside. Too strong as well, as a matter of fact.

Then again, he can't beat him doing the same thing over and over either because there is nothing about the sport of bruising that Hopkins hasn't mastered. He is a calm presence in the ring regardless of what's happening to him because he can adjust to anything an opponent tries. That being the case, De La Hoya must have more than one battle plan if he intends to dispute Hopkins' right to be called the undisputed champion.

As De La Hoya knows, the way to beat Hopkins is to move and force him to chase but not to run. It is to step to one side and make him turn and then slip to the other and make those old hips and legs swivel back and forth, chasing and missing while you extract a price for those movements while seldom letting him get close enough long enough to walk him down and do damage at close quarters.

De La Hoya understands this, which is why he will weigh no more than 154 or 155 pounds for this fight even though he was a pudgy 160 against Sturm, a mistake for which both he and Hopkins nearly paid dearly. Were it not for exceedingly kind judging that night, this fight might never have happened but for once De La Hoya got the benefit of the doubt, which has seldom been the case in for him Las Vegas. If he needs it again next weekend he may not get it, a fact he accepts as readily as his underdog status.

"Speed is the key for me," De La Hoya said. "That's for sure. I have a lot of confidence in my power but Hopkins relies on his power too. His movement is not as fast as mine though so I have to use my speed.

"(The difficulty of) winning a decision (in Las Vegas) is always in the back of my mind, but this is a different fight. I'm confident of the job I will do on Sept. 18. In Las Vegas you always have to worry about a bad decision. You have to rely on your talent. Ultimately it comes down to my skill, my toughness, my talent."

Underdog or not, Oscar De La Hoya believes in those things above all. They are what took him from the barrio to the boardroom. They are what made him The Golden Boy, the biggest name in boxing, the only fighter since Mike Tyson to transcend a dying sport.

To do such things were longshots. He was an underdog just growing up in East L.A. His best chance to get on the golf course at the Riveria Country Club, where he is now a member, was as a greens keeper not a golfer. Generally speaking, the only way a kid from his background with no college degree ends up in Beverly Hills is with a leaf blower on his back.

Yet Oscar De La Hoya, lifelong underdog, accomplished all those things. He is among the highest paid athletes in sports. His is a name you can find in a New Yorker cartoon and a New York Times crossword puzzle as well as in the sports pages. He was an underdog to accomplish any of those things let alone all of them.

So when he thinks of how they are looking at him in London, he smiles the wicked grin of the fox because he knows one thing - he's not a 6-1 underdog to anybody.