Time Right to Bring De La Hoya-Ruelas Bout to Market : Boxing: Financial conditions ripe for May 6 title fight between popular lightweight Latino fighters.

Sift back about a decade, when there were no million-dollar purses, no entourages, no fanfares.

There were only two skinny kids, one from East Los Angeles, one from the San Fernando Valley, scrambling into a ring together a few times, then going their separate ways.

On crisscrossing paths of glory, everything Oscar De La Hoya and Rafael Ruelas did from there, every bout, deal and morning run, has led them back to each other. And now, 10 years later, they are preparing for a lightweight showdown in Las Vegas on May 6.

In hindsight, the most anticipated, most fiercely argued bout involving Los Angeles fighters in two decades seems to have been fated.

But the deal did not come together until last November, when promoter Bob Arum saw the chance to grab the coveted Cinco de Mayo weekend slot usually taken by Julio Cesar Chavez, and rolled the dice with his two young, charismatic Latino champions for a pay-per-view bout he says could gross up to $20 million.

“I didn’t think it would happen as soon as it did, really,” International Boxing Federation champion Ruelas, who turns 24 today, says of fighting the 22-year-old De La Hoya, who holds the lesser-regarded World Boxing Organization belt. “I thought he would avoid it a lot longer than he did.

“When he said he wanted it, I thought, ‘Oh, cool.’ ”

When Arum told De La Hoya it might be time to fight Ruelas, the De La Hoya camp jumped.

“We were kind of thinking like, ‘Damn, maybe Ruelas won’t win his next fights,’ ” De La Hoya says. “ ‘We better take him before somebody else beats him.’ We got him just in time.”

Arum has promoted De La Hoya since the beginning of his professional career, when his 1992 Barcelona Olympics gold medal was still dazzlingly bright. Last year, Arum signed Ruelas, already a champion, to a promotional contract after Ruelas’ manager and promoter, Dan Goossen, folded his own company and went to work for Arum.

With both fighters already having shown they can tap into the vast Latino fight audience, and with Mexican hero Chavez fading badly and set to retire in about a year, Arum said May 6 was his chance to create the next Latino legend--one who can also speak English.

“I really felt Oscar was an emerging star,” Arum says. “And in Rafael, I had a fighter whose biggest asset was his heart. I mean, Rafael’s a very, very good fighter. But he’s also very vulnerable, and what gets him through and makes him as good as he is, is his incredible heart, the fact that he can recover from punishment and come on.

“But maybe he’s not going to be around forever. And this was his opportunity for a big payday. It was a match that was just a natural--there’s a rivalry in both of their minds.”

The fight was made in two steps--first when Arum took over promotional rights for Ruelas, then when last-ditch efforts to match De La Hoya and World Boxing Assn. junior-lightweight champion Genaro (Chiquinito) Hernandez, a long-time De La Hoya antagonist, fell apart last fall.

“When Dan started talking to me about coming with Top Rank (Arum’s company), I never put it in the context of a big match with De La Hoya,” Arum says. “I was thinking that the bigger match to be made was with Chiquinito Hernandez.”

With Hernandez out of the picture, Ruelas became the obvious opponent for a lucrative match, once De La Hoya moved up to 135 pounds, which he did last July.

That Ruelas and De La Hoya seem made to test each other’s flaws--De La Hoya’s flashing power and inexperience against Ruelas’ relentlessness and defensive holes--only heightened the appeal.

Arum promised Ruelas $1 million for the De La Hoya fight and, although De La Hoya later signed for a guaranteed $1.75 million, neither Ruelas nor Goossen has expressed frustration at earning less than the WBO champion.

De La Hoya, who has earned several seven-figure purses thanks to his deal with HBO, also gets a bigger cut of the pay-per-view money, and probably will earn nearly $3 million overall, Arum says. Ruelas, whose previous highest purse was $350,000, in his last fight, may get up to $2 million.

“A lot of people ask me if I have any resentment toward him because he’s getting paid more or because he’s going to get top billing,” Ruelas says. “That happens to most of the people who win gold medals. I don’t feel it should, but that’s the way things go.

“That’s OK, this is the confrontation. After May 6, Oscar won’t be there anymore.”

Both fighters, along with Rafael’s brother, World Boxing Council junior-lightweight champion Gabriel Ruelas, who is fighting on the undercard, are training about three square miles apart in Big Bear, so members of the camps run into each other all the time. And Goossen and Arum, with obvious and separate ties to each fighter, sit in the same office in Las Vegas.

“It’s a good relationship,” Goossen says. “We all understand that Bob has brought up Oscar, and we all know the Goossens have come up with the Ruelases. We haven’t made any pretensions of that not being true.

“Hey, there’s nothing to get uptight about, saying, ‘Oh my God, Bob’s for Oscar,’ or ‘Dan’s for Rafael.’ We all understand what’s out there.”

Says Arum, less than bashful about his loyalties, “Do I think Oscar’s going to win? Yeah.

“But we have done whatever we can to give them parity, except for the purse.”

When the purses were established--Ruelas figures to become only the second lightweight, after De La Hoya, to be paid in seven figures--Los Angeles, home of both fighters, was all but eliminated as the host city.

Without the large site fee that only Las Vegas casinos can ante, Arum says, this fight was unworkable.

“If I could put gambling tables in the Forum or Sports Arena, I’d put the fight there in a second,” Arum says. “But I can’t, so we’ve got to have it in Las Vegas, where they can guarantee us a site fee.”

Originally, because Arum had been taking so many fights to the MGM Grand and because De La Hoya and Ruelas both had fought at the huge hotel-casino, the MGM was assumed to be the site.

But then the George Foreman-Axel Schulz heavyweight fight last Saturday landed at the MGM, and the MGM decided not to offer Arum a site fee for De La Hoya-Ruelas.

Suddenly, Caesars Palace was in the picture, offering a guarantee, which Arum says should end up close to $2 million, based on a percentage of the gate.

Caesars, whose home company, Caesars World, has headquarters in Los Angeles, saw a chance of holding a potentially intense action fight between two popular L.A. boxers, and couldn’t resist, says Caesars World executive Rich Rose.

For Caesars, De La Hoya-Ruelas could be a Marvin Hagler-Thomas Hearns kind of fight, one that echoes in the minds for decades. Caesars World Chairman Henry Gluck, in particular, wanted this fight, Rose says.

“You look at the pay-per-view figures, you ask the people in that end, they’ll tell you the Hispanic buying audience is a very strong audience,” Rose says. “That is a fight audience that supports its stars.”

Increasingly, Rose says, American companies are realizing that the Latino sports audience is vast and ready to spend money.

“I don’t think it’s just beginning, I think it has begun,” Rose says. “This is helping to take it to the next level.

“If you look at the dominant personalities who are Latino fighters--(Roberto) Duran, Chavez--neither one spoke English to the public. These guys, they’re well-spoken, good representatives of the sport, can speak the languages and can make the transition. It has never happened before.”