De La Hoya Remains a Cut Above : Boxing: He scores his 10th consecutive victory when bout against Nunez is stopped after the fourth round.

Facing perhaps the toughest opponent of his young professional career, Oscar De La Hoya landed several ferocious punches in the third and fourth rounds that opened a cut over Angelo Nunez’s left eye, giving De La Hoya a technical knockout Friday at the Beverly Wilshire hotel.

Jack Karns, the attending physician, stopped the fight after examining Nunez following the fourth round.

De La Hoya had problems finding Nunez early and said Nunez’s awkwardness at times frustrated him. But by the fourth round, De La Hoya hit Nunez with a series of hard left hooks that dazed Nunez, who had not been stopped in 17 pro fights.

“I think I opened the cut with a right hand following a left hook,” said De La Hoya, the gold medalist at the Barcelona Olympics last year. “I’m trying to let the fight go later and wear my opponents down. That’s what I was doing.”

The victory was De La Hoya’s 10th in 10 pro fights, his ninth by knockout. Nunez dropped to 10-5-3.

After the fight, Nunez was overheard arguing with Karns that the fight should not have been stopped or that he should not have been the loser.

“Why didn’t they rule it a head butt, when that’s what it was?” Nunez said.

But De La Hoya only laughed when Nunez’s opinion was relayed to him.

“Look at my head,” De La Hoya said, pointing to an unmarked forehead. “Don’t think it was a head butt.”

Nunez began the fight as aggressively as any De La Hoya foe has to date. Nunez fought through De La Hoya’s strong hooks, kept moving forward and found De La Hoya with scoring punches.

“He was awkward,” De La Hoya said. “Awkward fighters can make good fighters look bad.”

De La Hoya now will take the first vacation of his nine-month pro career before he fights Narcisco Valenzuela on Oct. 30 in Phoenix. De La Hoya weighed in for this fight at 135 pounds but said he should have no trouble making the 130 junior-lightweight limit.

“It’ll be good to get away from boxing for a while,” De La Hoya said, “to relax and just not go through everyday training.”

After the Oct. 30 fight, De La Hoya is scheduled to fight for either the World Boxing Organization or International Boxing Federation junior-lightweight title Dec. 30 at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas.

In two early fights, Montell Griffin and Larry Donald both remained undefeated. Light-heavyweight Griffin (7-0) scored an uninspired unanimous decision over Ka-dy Kind, and heavyweight Donald (8-0) scored a third-round technical knockout over Mike Gans.