BOXING INTERVIEW with OSCAR DE LA HOYA: Donald McRaesets the scene as Oscar De La Hoya prepares to meet Manny Pacquiao in Saturday's 12-round non-title welterweight bout in Las Vegas.
EVEN WITH a purple bruise under his right eye Oscar De La Hoya has the kind of face more suited to Hollywood than the battered old ring. But, as the sweat runs down his cheeks in salty little rivulets and his gaunt features become sunken with fatigue up in the beautiful but remote mountains of Big Bear in California, De La Hoya could only be a fighter. Pummelling the speed-bag above his head he makes an eerie series of cries and grunts.
Three minutes become four, and then five, as the incessant rat-a-tat-tat echoes around the gym and a simple exercise of speed and timing becomes a punishing form of endurance. The sweat flies from him now, with two drops making perfectly round circles as they splatter against my dusty shoes. De La Hoya, of course, doesn't notice as his shrieks build in intensity.
For the past two months he has flogged and starved himself up at Big Bear where even the air, at 7,000ft, is painfully thin. De La Hoya is now a startlingly lean 145lb (10st 5lb) - 2lb below the limit at welterweight where, in Las Vegas on Saturday night, he will face the world's best pound-for-pound fighter in Manny Pacquiao. The winner will meet Ricky Hatton, probably at Wembley next summer, in the richest fight in British boxing history.
Pacquiao, however, haunts this pristine gym on a cold but sunlit morning. An image of the ferocious Filipino seems embedded in De La Hoya's brain as he completes his routine by hammering the speed-bag with a mighty swipe. "Pacquiao has given me my fire back," he says as he dries his drenched face.
"It's because of Pacquiao that I've come back to Big Bear, for the first time in years, and you can feel how hard it is to train here because of the altitude. It's because of Pacquiao I've lost 15 pounds. There's something personal between us."
De La Hoya is also the leading promoter in world boxing. And so he and his company, Golden Boy, are selling the $100 million battle against Pacquiao as the 'Fight of the Year'. They might just be right. De La Hoya is the fight game's undoubted pay-per-view king.
Pacquiao, meanwhile, is cherished by blue-collar fans who recognise a formidable technician with the grit to threaten the glamour of De La Hoya. The clash of styles and personalities, combined with an edge of bitterness between the camps, has produced a riveting build-up.
"He's the number one guy and we've both adjusted weight. I've had to shed the pounds and he's climbing two divisions to fight me. That's a big test for both of us. I also know this could be my last fight - or it could be the launching pad for something spectacular in London next year."
De La Hoya, with his charm and ability to dramatise a fight, is a brilliant salesman. Yet, as has so often been the case in his previous 44 bouts, he has carefully chosen a smaller man as his opponent. When Pacquiao started his professional career in 1995, he weighed a paltry 106lb (7st 8lb). He has since won world titles at four weights but the difference in size between him and De La Hoya is obvious.
Six years younger, at 29, Pacquiao brings speed and work-rate against De La Hoya's power. He is also trained by Freddie Roach, who has worked with De La Hoya before and claims to have an intimate understanding of the golden boy's declining skills. Roach has taunted De La Hoya as mentally weak and "unable to pull the trigger any more".
De La Hoya has refrained from hitting back at Roach, who has Parkinson's disease, but as the hype escalates his response becomes pointed.
"Freddie is a decent guy, but this is his way of motivating Pacquiao. It's desperate. And Pacquiao did not show much honour in our past dealings. I had no idea we would ever fight and I liked him as a boxer. I wanted to promote him and we met and shook hands on a deal. Manny didn't keep his word. He went with [Bob] Arum instead. I'm not vengeful but I might make him pay in Vegas."
De La Hoya delivers these heavily loaded words with a dazzling smile as if to prove his mastery of blending business with pain. After one of his rare mistakes, when he fought the much bigger Bernard Hopkins at middleweight in 2004, De La Hoya followed his comprehensive defeat by persuading his opponent to join him at Golden Boy.
In a similar way he is now promoting Hatton - despite the likelihood that they will soon fight each other. "I like Ricky," De La Hoya says, as if friendship should never be a bar to punching someone in the face.
"A fight against him would be very different to Pacquiao. Ricky and me would have a friendly build-up but, come fight night, with the way he swarms in aggressively, it would be very serious. We'd have to share some hurt to make a lot of money together."
When I spoke to Richard Schaefer, the amiable Swiss banker who is De La Hoya's chief executive at Golden Boy, the location of a fight against Hatton was discussed in purely economic terms. Schaefer mentioned the weakened pound and how even a crowd of 90,000 at Wembley would have to be measured against the impact a British-based contest might have on US pay-per-view sales.
De La Hoya waves away that argument. "A fight between me and Hatton has to happen in London. I can have a Vegas fight with anyone but if I'm going to fight Hatton it has to be in his backyard. At this stage I need special events to motivate me. London, in front of that vast Hatton crowd, would definitely motivate me."
It doesn't sound like De La Hoya is planning his retirement despite the fact that, when I first interviewed him, on the eve of his world-title debut in 1994, he told me he was yearning for the day he stopped fighting. Beneath the brooding shadow of his father, Joel, the 21-year-old dreamed of becoming an architect or, more simply, of dancing with a gorgeous girl instead. "I remember that one," De La Hoya exclaims as a now 35-year-old father of two. "We were in downtown LA. I weighed in at 127 pounds and won my first world title that night. It seems incredible that, 14 years on and with titles in five more weight classes, I'm still fighting. But I definitely love it more now than then."
Is that because he's now fighting for himself rather than his overpowering father? "Fighters and their fathers have complex relationships. My father was single-minded in the way he groomed me to fight. My relationship with my own little boy and girl is the opposite. I come alive when I play with them. I could not be a father if I did not show them that love. But my father is different. We still don't have any proper conversations - but I've got his respect now. And he gave me this strange love for boxing."
Beyond his renewed passion for fighting De La Hoya is a consistently vibrant promoter. "David Haye!" he suddenly yelps as he praises another of his British fighters. "Now there's a guy to keep me excited about this game. Heavyweight boxing is a mess but Haye will do great things. Did you see him against Monte Barrett [last month]? It was non-stop excitement the whole fight. Haye has the size, the power, the skills and the personality to be a sensation in America."
Haye also has a vulnerable chin and, accepting that sobering reminder in a dangerous business, De La Hoya ducks inside the ropes in Big Bear. "Danger equals excitement," he grins, banging his white gloves together, "but you have to be prepared. At this level you're facing guys who want to do serious damage. That's why when it's time to work, like now, I just focus on Manny Pacquiao."
De La Hoya might not be the boxer he was 12 years ago, on the night in 1996 when he dismantled the great Mexican Julio Cesar Chavez, but he should be too big and strong for Pacquiao.
Daniel Zaragoza, another former world champion, looks like he shares that belief as he waves his pads in the air.
His bashed-in 50-year-old face is a far more authentic reflection of a life in boxing than De La Hoya's pin-up looks. Zaragoza's pads absorb the jabs and a left hook De La Hoya delivers with his familiar rasping cry.
Later, as the sun sinks over the mountain road snaking back down to Los Angeles, a two-hour drive to the west of Big Bear, it's hard to shake the echo of those ancient boxing sounds from my head. Boxing's brutal old business might be dying but, with De La Hoya set to light up Vegas this weekend and London next summer, it's not quite yet over. The long goodbye should be as spectacular as it will be lucrative.
• Guardian Service
