It’s No Act for De La Hoya, Who Has New Zest for Ring

Older, wiser, happier, and about 10 pounds heavier than he was a year ago, Oscar De La Hoya sagged into a plush sofa early this week and acknowledged that his life has reached a special place.

The movie star dreams? Forgotten, for now. The plans to quit boxing ASAP and go to architecture school? Put on hold.

“I’m maturing,” De La Hoya said, sitting inside the large wood cabin just built on his one-acre compound. “I can see the big picture now.

“I was thinking of taking a year off and quitting boxing, but that’s out of the game plan. For a while, I was getting tired, but then I thought about everything I can do in boxing.

“I’m only 23, I have my whole life ahead of me. I’m going to try to just do the best job possible in boxing, and then I can retire. I don’t want to regret the fact that I quit boxing at 23, then come back at 25. I don’t want to be like that.”

De La Hoya credits part of his renewed zest for boxing to Jesus Rivero, the quirky, fascinating man from Yucatan, Mexico. He was brought in a year ago to assist main trainer Robert Alcazar, who openly disdained Rivero and considered him a rival.

But over the months, De La Hoya has developed chemistry with, and trust in, Rivero--who preaches a savvier, more intricate style versus the upright attack De La Hoya had been using under Alcazar. After a year of tension, his advisors made a key change with De La Hoya’s blessing: Rivero has been given complete control of training for the fight against Julio Cesar Chavez on June 7.

For the first time since Rivero joined the De La Hoya team four fights ago, Rivero will be in the corner during the fight and, although Alcazar also will be there, Rivero will be the only one speaking to the fighter during breaks.

Alcazar, who has been criticized for his lack of major level experience and who openly opposed having to split duties with Rivero in past camps, has not been in Big Bear for the first two months of camp. He will join the training in a week or so.

To help soothe Alcazar’s feelings, he has been given a new five-year contract and assurances that he will always be part of De La Hoya’s career.

“I think everybody knows where their place is,” said De La Hoya’s closest advisor, Mike Hernandez. “I hope so, anyway. Because I’m the one who has to take the heat, from each of them.

“It wasn’t easy. But I think Robert’s a very reasonable guy. He’s going to be around Oscar for a long time. Oscar always felt Robert was part of it. But we’re going through a transition to a higher level of boxing, and Robert knows that.”

Said Alcazar, “We’ve been getting more and more experience as time goes by. And now, with this adjustment, with this move and this new deal we’ve put together, it brings peace to everybody on the team. Everybody knows who’s working in which area and everybody’s supporting everybody.

“All this had been planned almost a year ago. And finally, it’s here. We’ve been getting ready for this specific fight for almost a year.”

“I can teach more,” Rivero said through an interpreter of working full time with De La Hoya. “I can get more involved with Oscar and get Oscar more involved with what I’m teaching.

“He’s thinking more about boxing. Before, after working out, he’d just go into the house and forget about boxing. Go play golf, whatever. Now, after he trains, we record all the training. We go in and study what he’s done. We’re thinking and talking about boxing all the time.”

De La Hoya, fighting at the 140-pound weight limit for only the second time, has gone into a fitness and nutrition program for the first time, and the difference is obvious in the thick bunches of muscles around his shoulders and chest. He weighs about 148.

But the most important thing for him, he said, is that, after past management turmoil, trainer tension and personal travails, his camp is, at last, peaceful. He has his self-designed house, a giant entertainment system in the living room, his private gym and his hand-picked trainer.

And an $8.95-million guaranteed purse to fight Chavez, with a handful of megafights ahead.

“Everything just fell into place,” De La Hoya said. “The home got finished, I have my own gym. Everything’s just perfect. We didn’t really plan it out like this, it just happened. The timing was just so perfect.”

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His handlers talk about the sacrifices De La Hoya is making in this camp that he never made before: He’s sticking to a non-junk-food diet and working out three times a day. But the biggest sacrifice?

“Truthfully, the reason why I said I wanted to take a year off was because I wanted to golf more,” De La Hoya said. “Seriously. For a time, boxing was not my No. 1 priority, and that was wrong to think like that. Boxing is No. 1 now.

“Now I know I can wait. Golf can wait. I can be 70 years old and still play golf.”

There’s not much golfing time cut into the schedule proposed by promoter Bob Arum, assuming a victory over Chavez: Take on former lightweight champion Miguel Angel Gonzalez on Sept. 17 in Las Vegas, fight one last time at 140 pounds in December in Mexico City, move up to the 147-pound welterweight division in February, possibly in Japan, then fight either of the dominant welterweight champions, Pernell Whitaker or Felix Trinidad in May 1997.

Boxing Notes

Genaro Hernandez, who hadn’t fought since losing to Oscar De La Hoya last September, returned to the ring Wednesday in Indio, scoring a fifth-round technical knockout despite not finding out Javier Pichardo was a left-hander until two days before the fight. “Genaro handled it like the professional he is,” said Rudy Hernandez, the fighter’s brother and manager. “He was a little stiff in the first round, but Genaro started loosening up and took control of the fight with ease.” Hernandez, the former World Boxing Assn. 130-pound champion who used to fight for the Forum, has signed with Top Rank, which has most of the big-name junior-lightweights under contract. “Genaro has one more fight coming up in July, and hopefully a title shot in September, either the [James] Leija-[World Boxing Council champion Azumah] Nelson winner or [International Boxing Federation champion] Arturo Gatti.”

Heavyweight derby, cont.: It looks as if Lennox Lewis, who defeated Ray Mercer Friday night, will be the first credible heavyweight to face Mike Tyson since his incarceration. Lewis, the former WBC champion, won a court battle to ensure he gets the next shot at Tyson, perhaps as early as July 13. That’s when Tyson, the WBC champion, is supposed to fight WBA title-holder Bruce Seldon, but he can’t fight Seldon unless he relinquishes the WBC belt or Lewis is induced to step aside for a few months. Don King, Tyson’s promoter, would like to hold off on Tyson-Lewis until November, and, barring major complications, Lewis probably will accept an ironclad deal for a huge purse on the November date.

The Forum was deeply disappointed with the less than 3,000 paid gate for its show at the Pond of Anaheim last Saturday, a pay-per-view card headlined by Marco Antonio Barrera, Mark Johnson and Jorge Paez. But while Barrera may not yet be a major draw, by wiping out veteran Jesse Benavides with a crushing body shot in the second, he did nothing to disprove the notion that he is a rising star. “I think the fight with [Kennedy] McKinney gave Marco great confidence,” said his manager, Ricardo Maldonado, speaking of February’s battle for survival at the Forum. “He knows he can get through some tough times now.” The most anticipated match is against Naseem Hamed, a wildly acrobatic fighter based in England by way of Yemen. Hamed will make his American television debut June 8 on a Showtime card, led by Terry Norris, from England.

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Calendar

Thursday: Mark Lewis vs. Hector Pena, junior-welterweights; 6:30 p.m., Long Beach Pyramid.

Friday: Dave Dixon vs. Cesar Rendon, heavyweights; Young Dick Tiger vs. Leonel Ortiz, junior-middleweights; 7:30 p.m., Culver City Veterans Memorial Building.