‘Nice Guy’ De La Hoya Needed Room to Bloom : Boxing: He cites breach of contract as reason for firing his co-managers, calling it ‘a move we had to make.’

Wearing a Christmas-colored cast on his left hand and a relaxed grin on his face, Oscar De La Hoya looked a little weary but obviously comfortable with the storm he had created.

In his first interview since he began maneuvering to fire his co-managers, conducted at a mall where the fighter had bought a new suit for today’s scheduled news conference, De La Hoya said that the failures of Steve Nelson and Bob Mittleman to deliver on their promises pushed him to replace them.

“This is a move we had to make,” De La Hoya said. “First of all, they did not do what they promised in the contract. Breach of contract. It was something that we really thought about. It’s going to be so much better for myself.

“They’ve breached the contract so many times--we found out they had no money to support what they had to. It was a very, very tough decision. But I put my foot down and that’s it.”

De La Hoya said that all he was doing was taking total control of his career--he said he expects to be his own manager--and he laughed off reports that he had received $1.5 million in cash from an unidentified source to make the jump.

“When they breached the contract once, I wasn’t happy,” De La Hoya said. “But they’re such smooth talkers, they pressure you so much. Me, I’m a kid of 20 years of age--I was 19 back then. What can I say? I could never say no. I’m a nice guy.

“It’s a case of two people coming from New York, giving me $1 million. They didn’t come through and messed me over.”

After being told of De La Hoya’s comments, Mittleman said it was obvious that De La Hoya was making up excuses to cover the real reason he left.

“We lived up to every obligation we had,” Mittleman said. “What’s he going to say? ‘I took $1 million from Nelson and Mittleman, used them up until I got the HBO deal and then left them when somebody else gave me more money?’

“Yeah, how did we mismanage him? By getting him to 11-0 and getting him a multimillion-dollar HBO contract? He’s making these things up now.”

According to De La Hoya, the timing of the move, days before his New York debut, where he was also scheduled to sign his five-fight deal with HBO, was triggered by his desire to remove Mittleman and Nelson before the richest deals rolled in.

The HBO deal is still set to be signed, and De La Hoya said he would be ready for his scheduled title fight at the Olympic Auditorium on March 5. De La Hoya also said that, for now, he intends to honor his three-year deal with promoter Bob Arum, although he added that he is re-evaluating all of his business deals.

“I’m young, my career is just beginning,” De La Hoya said. “I’m kind of like a seed ready to bloom. I wanted to have it all straightened out before it all starts. My career is going to go into entertainment, into commercials, into everything, the movie business. It’s going to blast off like a rocket, go up into the stars.”

Does he have a new group of people ready to step in to take over his career?

“I don’t know where people get that,” De La Hoya said, although he conceded that local businessman Raynaldo T. Garza will act as his business agent.

Asked where he will get the $1 million-plus it will take to buy Mittleman and Nelson out of the contract, De La Hoya pointed to money he expects to make from his HBO deal and fights in the near future.

The fighter lambasted Mittleman and Nelson for moving to Los Angeles from New York to be closer to him, and suggested that their attempts to woo his father to their side backfired.

“They talked to him so much, they confused him,” De La Hoya said. “It didn’t work. My father is 150% behind me.”

De La Hoya said he realized over time that, although Mittleman and Nelson sounded good when they offered him the five-year, $1-million package he signed after his gold-medal performance in the 1992 Olympics, he quickly realized they were wrong for him.

He also said that their decision more than a week ago to bring in Carlos Ortiz--without the fighter’s approval--to assist longtime trainer Robert Alcazar was symptomatic of their disregard for his opinions.

“They were making decisions without us,” De La Hoya said. “They were doing things behind our back. I don’t see how I could have handled it any differently. For me to be happy, everything had to be running smoothly, and I wasn’t happy, so I did what I had to do.

“We’re back to our old team, the team that we had in the beginning. We won’t have anything to worry about except training, fighting, and having fun.”

Asked about the possibility that he will be summoned to New York to face an inquiry into his pull-out, De La Hoya said his doctors could provide proof that his injury is real.