He’s Taken Law Into Own Hands : Boxing: For now, junior-featherweight champion Marco Antonio Barrera will use gloves, not words, to fight his battles.

Marco Antonio Barrera, an aspiring lawyer in boxing gloves, grew up on movie sets, never worried about money and celebrated winning a world title by contemplating an immediate career change.

No, this is not your normal up-from-the-barrio boxing story, and the 21-year-old Barrera, the soft-spoken son of a wealthy Mexico City movie worker, knows it.

After defeating Daniel Jimenez for the World Boxing Organization junior-featherweight championship at The Pond of Anaheim last spring, Barrera talked of retiring so that he could fulfill his dream of going to law school.

“Believe it or not, at the time of the [March 31 title] fight in Anaheim, I was already enrolled,” Barrera said through an interpreter, referring to a prep school that would provide him with the one semester of credit he needs to get into law school. “You’ve got to reserve a seat, and I had it--that’s how serious I was. Everything was ready for me to jump into school.

“I have always loved the law. Always. But the people didn’t let me retire.”

Barrera, in final preparations for his title defense against Maui Diaz Saturday at the Forum on a pay-per-view card headlined by Humberto (Chiquita) Gonzalez, says this with a shrug, glancing at his interpreter quickly after he is finished.

On his own, Barrera has been studying English for the last six months, and recently stood up at a news conference in Atlantic City, N.J., and gave a short speech. Julio Cesar Chavez and Gonzalez, the two biggest Mexican boxing stars, have never really tried to speak or learn English.

But, for this interview, Barrera chose to speak Spanish, softly.

Why didn’t he retire? Because the boxing fans of Los Angeles, where Barrera has had almost all of his major bouts and where he is actually more famous than he is in his hometown of Mexico City, urged him not to.

“My goal in boxing was to be world champion,” Barrera said. “I have done that. Now I’m only going to fight for the people of California or the people around the world who love boxing. I’ve accomplished my goal.

“A lot of people who saw me fight at the Forum, a lot of people from Los Angeles talked to me, and they said they’ve seen me fight, why retire? You could be great. Why retire undefeated, a world champion?

“I’ve decided I will continue to fight. I don’t know how long, but right now, I’m in boxing.”

Right now, Barrera is one of the more physically talented young boxers in the sport, with the kind of hand speed that has enabled him to move comfortably from the 115-pound division, past his more natural 118-pound division and into a title at 122.

Although Barrera has 25 knockouts in 36 victories, he’s not known as a Chavez-style brawler and never lets a flicker of emotion cross his face in the ring.

He says he gravitated to boxing slowly as a child, and enjoyed soccer and baseball just as much, until the challenge of boxing--”It takes great dedication”--drew his total commitment.

Barrera is a classic boxer who spends time sizing up his opponent before cutting him down.

“He’s a great thinker in the ring,” said Fernando Paramo, sports editor of L.A.’s dominant Spanish-language paper, La Opinion, and a knowledgeable observer of the Latino fight scene. “Except for the last fight, [a two-round knockout of Frankie Toledo on June 2] in Connecticut. The guy had been saying all kinds of things about Mexican fighters, so Barrera went out to knock him out, which he did.

“But he’s more into the sport of it. To him, I guess, boxing is just like chess . . . except you throw punches.”

Even now, Barrera says, when he’s not in training, he goes back to Mexico City to work on movie sets and background pieces with his stagehand father, and gets paid top peso.

With money in the family, and his passion for the law, those in Barrera’s camp acknowledge they don’t know how long he’ll stay in the sport--and whether he’ll have the longevity to bring himself to the level of Chavez or his idol, the late, great Salvador Sanchez.

Soon, though, they say, he will command the top spot in pay-per-view shows, and however long he stays in the sport, he will be a star.

“Everything comes easy for this kid,” said Barrera’s assistant trainer, Tony Rivera. “He doesn’t realize how good he is. It’s so easy for him. While all these other guys have to work their butt off, he’s just a natural fighter.

“He comes from a very wealthy family--doesn’t have to fight, doesn’t need to fight. Yet he loves to fight.”

As long as he continues, Barrera says, he will fight in America--and most of those fights will be in Los Angeles.

“Before he was brought here to fight, he was not recognized in Mexico,” Paramo said. “He got recognition first in the L.A. area. L.A., it’s the third-largest Mexican city, actually, so it’s a sign of the times.

“You can have a Mexican idol develop outside of Mexico.”

For a few years before winning the WBO title, Barrera had been frustrated. Although he was highly regarded after a string of victories at the Forum, the politics of the major sanctioning bodies had denied him a chance to fight for a super-flyweight title.

In fact, Barrera, who was at the time ranked No. 1 by the World Boxing Council, traveled to Argentina in April 1993 to fight hometown fighter Carlos Salazar, with the winner apparently guaranteed a shot at the title. Barrera took a majority decision over Salazar, but watched as Salazar got the title shot--and lost again.

Having some difficulty with the 115-pound limit, Barrera began searching for bantamweight chances, and his camp thought they had a deal with then-International Boxing Federation champion Orlando Canizales, considered one of the greatest lighter-weight fighters of this era. But Canizales decided not to take the fight.

“My natural weight is bantam, that’s where I want to go,” Barrera said. ‘But there are no titles for me there. I cannot get a fight.”

So Barrera, who at 5 feet 7 1/2 has a frame that fits a 122-pounder, went all the way up to junior-featherweight, where nobody was sure if he could handle the higher punching power.

“Of course, the power’s different, but I got used to it right away,” Barrera said. “Everybody said I wasn’t going to knock anybody out at 122. I proved it June 2 against Frank Toledo in Connecticut. The power’s there.”

The Toledo knockout might have been Barrera’s most devastating performance.

“Although he doesn’t change his expression, any time he gets hit, he goes after the guy,” Paramo said. “Although he’s very introverted, his personality is that of a little tiger.”