De La Hoya Wraps It Up With Right Hand : Boxing: He shows off his new weapon and stays unbeaten with sixth-round TKO. Roy Jones dances for five rounds, then knocks out Malinga.

On a steamy Gulf Coast night, Oscar De La Hoya entered the ring cold.

Usually a fast starter, De La Hoya lost warm-up time in his dressing room when officials from the Mississippi Boxing Commission made his trainer re-tape one glove.

De La Hoya came out feeling “a little worried,” but after a sluggish start, he wound into form Saturday. He knocked down his opponent, Renaldo (Little Red) Carter, three times from the third round on, and waltzed away with a technical knockout at 2:10 in the sixth.

“He took the first two rounds practically off,” said De La Hoya’s trainer, Robert Alcazar. “But when he got going, it was over.”

Scoring often with a hard, straight right hand--a punch new to De La Hoya’s repertoire--the 1992 gold medalist won all five rounds easily.

He put Carter down for the final time in the sixth with a left hook that dazed him, and followed with a punishing overhand right that sent him to the canvas.

Carter barely gained his feet in time to beat the 10-count. Seconds later, with Carter (27-5-1) lurching across the ring, referee Chester Comeaux stopped the fight. That gave De La Hoya his ninth victory and eighth knockout in nine pro fights.

After the fight, De La Hoya, whose main power punch has always been his left hook, clearly was proud with the damage done by his right hand.

“Imagine if I had a right hand like my left hand,” De La Hoya said. “That’d be really dangerous.”

De La Hoya said the recent injury to his left hand, an injury that forced cancellation of a July 17 fight, allowed him to sharpen up his right-hand punches in the gym.

“Everybody knows my right hand isn’t as strong as my left, so I wanted to come out tonight throwing the right and surprise people,” De La Hoya said. “I didn’t feel any pain in my left tonight, but the injury gave me a chance to concentrate on the right, and I think it showed.”

According to computer statistics, De La Hoya connected on 56% of his power punches, most of those with the right.

Said Alcazar: “We’ve been focusing on the right hand in the gym recently, and that’s what he wanted to work on. And you saw the results tonight. Wow. He was really throwing it.”

In the co-main event, International Boxing Federation middleweight champion Roy Jones ran his record to 23-0 with a sixth-round knockout of Thulane Malinga.

It was Jones’ 21st knockout and the first time Malinga (35-9) had ever been knocked out.

“It means I hit harder than anybody he’s fought,” Jones said.

Dancing and spinning through the first five rounds, Jones (23-0, 21 knockouts) connected with a left hook-right uppercut combination that dropped Malinga. After staggering halfway to his feet, Malinga fell back down and was counted out at 1:57.

“What I wanted to do out there was start enjoying boxing again,” Jones said when asked about his showboating in the non-title fight. “I hadn’t been having fun in boxing or in my performances in boxing, and I got back to that tonight.”

For De La Hoya, the night was one more step toward his short-term goal, fighting for the junior lightweight (130-pound) title. He weighed in at 132 Saturday, but said that he had been under 130 for most of this week and would be comfortable fighting there.

After an Aug. 27 charity date against Angel Nunez at the Beverly Wilshire and an Oct. 10 bout against Narcisco Valenzuela at Phoenix, De La Hoya is focusing on a possible matchup with Jimmy Bredahl for Bredhal’s World Boxing Organization title Dec. 30 at Las Vegas.

“If it’s WBO, that’d be great,” De La Hoya said when he was asked if the minor status of that sanctioning body bothered him. “A world title is a world title.”