De La Hoya, Jones Head Card in Bay St. Louis : Boxing: Barcelona champion will fight Carter. Victim of Seoul injustice will take on Malinga tonight.

Two careers illuminated by the Olympic flame, albeit for different reasons, will intersect briefly tonight under a tent pitched over a gravel road.

After an absence of decades, big-time boxing returns to Mississippi in the form of Roy Jones and Oscar De La Hoya.

Jones, who won the International Boxing Federation middleweight title in May, entered the American consciousness when he lost a medal-round decision at the 1988 Seoul Games. It was a verdict so universally derided that it caused a change in the way Olympic fights are scored.

De La Hoya, currently a junior lightweight, emerged from the 1992 Barcelona Games as the only gold-medalist on the U.S. team, propelling him into instant marketability as a professional.

Neither will be fighting anybody notable under the air-conditioned, football-field-size tent adjacent to Casino Magic, whose first attempt at staging a fight was blown away by a storm earlier this year.

Jones will fight South African Thulane Malinga, who is 35-8 with 13 knockouts in a non-title bout; De La Hoya will face Renaldo Carter of Detroit, who is 27-4-1 with 15 knockouts.

During the days leading up to these fights, De La Hoya and Jones have seemed more interested in each other than in their opponents.

“He got a lot of publicity, a lot of attention for not winning the gold medal,” De La Hoya said of Jones, who is 22-0 with 20 knockouts. “Things happen. I guess things are meant to happen. . . . He won the silver medal and he got a lot of credit.

“I’m excited about being on the same card as him, and maybe, after I get a title, we can travel around and do a lot of shows together.”

Said Jones: “I think Oscar De La Hoya is one of the best fighters, whatever weight he is, I’ve ever seen.”

The undefeated De La Hoya, with seven knockouts in eight bouts, is fighting to fulfill what he began in Barcelona--to be always known as an American winner.

Jones conceded that he probably will always be known as the fighter who had a gold medal stolen from him, and that he is fighting, in part, to be known for something more.

“Winning the title was sweeter than a gold medal would have been, I think,” Jones said.

“Things are going a lot differently for me since becoming champion. For a while there, I was kind of antsy, things weren’t going my way. . . . Now it’s starting to pay off.”

This is De La Hoya’s first bout since suffering a bruised left hand that canceled a July 17 date, but his trainer, Robert Alcazar, said that after taking a week off from training last month, De La Hoya hasn’t been bothered by it.

“It wasn’t an injury, it was just a bruise,” Alcazar said. “It’s no problem.”