$8 Million Later, Oscar de la Hoya Says He’s . . . STILL HUNGRY : Former Olympic Gold Medalist Wants to Earn as Much Money as He Can, Then Take It and Run

The money and teeny-bopper adulation came first, in rushes and blushes, and Oscar De La Hoya, giggling last week over some early-morning sausage and eggs, says he never minded any of that.

“Would you?” he asks with a wink.

Next came the controversy and the broken contracts, and although it looked as if he was just another spoiled brat spurning his responsibilities, De La Hoya smiles and says it was part of learning the business and taking control of his career in the seamy world of boxing.

That period is over now, he says, and, looking calmer at 22 and facing next Saturday’s landmark lightweight fight against Rafael Ruelas, he’s confident that his career is churning along ahead of pace.

Next, De La Hoya says, is to ensure himself a life of luxury after boxing, to earn as much money as he possibly can, then exit forever, young, healthy and set for life.

And if he quits with the hard-core boxing world still criticizing his glamour-boy looks, dedication to the sweet science and relatively genteel fighting style, De La Hoya says he can live with it.

Roberto Duran has hands of stone, an evil stare and a loyal following, even now at a floppish 40-something. Sugar Ray Leonard had a megawatt smile and, most important, the need to knock off anybody who would challenge him.

Oscar De La Hoya? He has the movie star cheekbones, the boxing talent and the light temperament that seem to fit the golf course far better than the Caesars Palace outdoor arena.

Would he give up the good life--he has already, counting this $1.75-million payday, grossed close to $8 million--to be considered one of the great boxing warriors of all time?

“No, I wouldn’t--not me,” De La Hoya says, forcefully. “There’s tons of fighters, they put up good fights, they come out all cut up, all beat up, and the people clap and they’re all happy. But after two or three weeks, people forget about them.

“You have to put up a good show because they pay the money. I’m going to do that, but I’m going to get my money and run. Of course, I want to win world titles and have a big name. But I want to have as few fights as possible and make the most money. My image is like a star image.”

Ruelas, the International Boxing Federation champion, is a fierce, awkward, heavy-punching opponent, whose stern, steady career has been in marked contrast to De La Hoya’s glittering roller-coaster ride.

But De La Hoya, champion of the lightly regarded World Boxing Organization, fervently denies that this bout is a clash of his considerable talent and the 24-year-old Ruelas’ burning hunger to succeed.

“I don’t lack the hunger, because my record is clean, my record is undefeated, so I’m doing something right,” says De La Hoya (17-0). “If I wasn’t going in with any hunger, then what am I doing in the ring?

“I go in with hunger, but people just don’t see it. I show it with my fists. I knock these guys out, I beat these guys and that’s it.

“As a champion, in and out of the ring, I want to be like Sugar Ray Leonard. I would like to be the way he made his money and was very smart--exactly like that. Stay clean. I think he got cut one time, that’s it.”

But, De La Hoya is reminded, Leonard kept coming back despite frequent retirement announcements, until he was knocked out of boxing for good by Terry Norris.

“Yeah, he did, and that wasn’t very smart,” De La Hoya says. “But I don’t think it was because of money. I think it was because of the love of the sport, the attention.

“I hope I don’t have that problem.”

*

You want passion? You want hunger? Watch De La Hoya on the scruffy Big Bear nine-hole golf course less than an hour after his afternoon workout.

De La Hoya took up golf a few months ago, at the urging of his mentor, local businessman Mike Hernandez. Already, he has joined a Whittier country club, quizzed Hernandez about angling toward the senior tour and mutters in exasperation after every errant shot.

“I think more boxers should get into golf,” De La Hoya says. “It could create a cleaner image for boxing. And boxers have this eye coordination with everything. It’s there--the timing, everything is there.

“But I think I’m the only boxer right now that’s playing golf. The only one that plays is Sugar Ray Leonard, but he’s retired.

“I can’t imagine George Foreman playing golf. And,” he says, laughing, “there’s no way Rafael plays golf.”

Hernandez has done more than point De La Hoya to the golf course and has emerged as the key figure in the young fighter’s career as he moves from little-tested Olympic gold medalist to multimillion-dollar man.

Hernandez, a friend of the family, stepped in when De La Hoya’s career and life were in chaos.

De La Hoya was suing to break his management contract with Robert Mittleman and Steve Nelson, who had signed him to a $1-million deal after De La Hoya had been the only American to win a boxing gold medal in the 1992 Barcelona Games.

De La Hoya was also at odds with his father, Joel, who originally sided with Mittleman and Nelson, was being influenced by people with questionable backgrounds and was no longer in frequent contact with Robert Alcazar, his longtime trainer.

“I thought it was going to be another one of those Roy Jones deals, seriously,” says Oscar’s older brother, Joel Jr., referring to the bitter split between the IBF super-middleweight champion and his father. “Because my dad was just on him all the time. And we kind of had a feeling, when Mittleman and Nelson were around, that he was more with their side.”

In the months after the managerial conflict, De La Hoya embraced the fast life, and at one point was spending up to $10,000 a week, considerably more the week he bought a Lamborghini.

“What I noticed is they needed a lot of help and I didn’t see anybody willing to give him a hand,” Hernandez says. “After they got rid of Mittleman, they actually were hiding.”

In late 1993 and early ‘94, as De La Hoya was getting ready to start earning seven-figure purses in his new HBO deal, Hernandez brokered the settlement among the co-managers, De La Hoya and promoter Bob Arum.

“The first time, I told him I’d be around for six months, help make the settlement, and then you go on your own way,” Hernandez says. “And then it started getting deeper, and I forgot my own rule: The more money you make, the more problems.

“This kid’s got the potential to make $50 million, really. And I hope he wakes up to the fact that he can do it. But it’s not only the boxing. He can box and win money, but if in 10 years he doesn’t have anything, what’s it for?”

Cleaning up De La Hoya’s business mess was not achieved without making some enemies, Hernandez says. At one memorable meeting of the dozen-or-so people who had scrambled onto De La Hoya’s payroll after the Mittleman-Nelson meltdown, Hernandez says he ordered De La Hoya to fire at least two of the entourage.

Hernandez asked Leigh Steinberg, the high-profile agent, to take on De La Hoya’s marketing and promotions account. And gone were Raynaldo Garza and Jerry Salas, a cousin of De La Hoya’s father, the two Mittleman and Nelson suspected of causing the fighter to break the contract.

“My biggest problem now is to keep him away from leeches,” Hernandez says. “Everybody wants to be his friend. They come from the rocks and they all want to be with Oscar.”

Adrian Pasten, De La Hoya’s cousin and off-and-on confidant, says he was brought in to help, but now hints that he could take legal measures against De La Hoya because of broken promises.

“Too much too soon could be very damaging when you’re not prepared,” Pasten says. “The whole De La Hoya camp, whoever’s with him, it has always been a headache.”

But, Hernandez says, things have settled down.

As was reported frequently during De La Hoya’s gold-medal effort, the boxer’s mother had recently died of breast cancer. When his father remarried last year, Oscar moved out of the family house in Montebello to a condominium in Whittier.

Construction of a gym and log cabin in Big Bear--about a block away, coincidentally, from the house Rafael and Gabriel Ruelas always rent while in training--is well under way.

A lawsuit brought by manager Shelly Finkel, who claims he was never repaid for more than $100,000 he lent De La Hoya and his father in De La Hoya’s amateur days, is still brewing. Hernandez says, however, that he has made two offers to settle. Finkel said Thursday that he hopes to take depositions in New York in late May.

“In the last 12 months, I’d say he finally has matured,” Hernandez says of De La Hoya. “The one thing he has learned right away is not to sign contracts without getting advised. That’s No. 1. Second one is, he’s getting tight with his money now.”

De La Hoya says he considers Hernandez a second father, which is especially poignant considering the break, and reconciliation, he had with his real father.

“I think without Mike, I wouldn’t be here,” De La Hoya says. “He’s the one that made me more aware. He wants to take care of my financial problems and he wants to see me as a very successful Hispanic boxer.

“Hopefully, I’ll have Mike for the rest of my career, because without him I can’t do anything.”

*

De La Hoya knows that many in boxing--especially in the Latino community--actively dislike him, boo him when they can, and are rooting for the Mexican-born Ruelas to chop him to pieces.

But if that’s the price he pays for the HBO money, the movie offers, country club memberships and girlfriends, he says he accepts it.

“I guess they want to see me go down because since the Olympic Games, I’ve been the Golden Boy and this and that,” De La Hoya says. “And now it’s, ‘Hey, he’s this rich kid.’ People want to see me go down.”

Despite his 15 knockout victories, some question De La Hoya’s zest for battle, his willingness to accept punishment in order to deliver it.

His last fight, a unanimous decision over former 130-pound champion John John Molina, was an ugly, head-butting scramble, and De La Hoya irritated some fans by appealing to referee Mills Lane to keep Molina away from him.

But one respected trainer, Teddy Atlas, says he was impressed by the character De La Hoya showed against Molina.

“He didn’t look pretty, but he showed a fighter’s temperament, I’ll tell you that,” Atlas says. “It got tough, it got ugly, it got testy. Molina was trying to frustrate him, rough him up.

“But in the long run, De La Hoya showed more than flash. He showed he had something of substance. Even though it didn’t look pretty, he stuck his toes in the canvas and he did not submit. And if he had it in himself to submit, he would have done it in the Molina fight.”

*

Even when speaking about his mother, De La Hoya’s voice does not turn hard or emotional--but his words are sadly piercing.

Would he have gotten into so much trouble with Mittleman and Nelson if his mother had been alive?

“Oh, I would have fired them long ago,” De La Hoya says. “The first problem that I saw and explained to her, she would have told me to fire them, get rid of them.

“I wouldn’t have had the problem of my father being against me and she would have talked to him. And everything would have worked out fine.”

Now, De La Hoya says, he sees his mother in his 13-year-old sister, Ceci, whom he dotes on as if she were a daughter.

“Oh yeah, all the time,” De La Hoya says of her similarities to his mother. “My little sister tells me what to do. She tells me, ‘I don’t want to see you fight. Get out of boxing. Spend more time with me.’ She’s like that, you know? She’s very pushy.”

And at that moment, in the clear Big Bear morning, De La Hoya sounds, for him, a rare wistful tone.

“And that’s the way my mother was,” he says warmly. “Very pushy. I miss that.”