READY TO RUMBLE : Fernando Vargas’ Olympic Boxing Training Started Long Ago When He Sought Out Challengers on the Streets of Oxnard

The kid wanted to fight.

In the streets or inside the ropes, against big, little or any size in between, Fernando Vargas was a scuffle waiting to happen, well on his way to a many-fists-in-the-face manifest destiny.

He wasn’t 11 yet, and he was way past ready to rumble.

“I was always fighting in the streets,” Vargas said last week, in his last day of home training before leaving for U.S. boxing team workouts for the Summer Olympics in Atlanta. “I got into boxing because I was a roughneck in the streets.

“I was one of those little kids who got into trouble, mainly for fighting, nothing else. I think I always had it in my mind that I was going to be champion, that when I stepped into the ring, I would own the ring. That’s something all fighters probably have, but I think I have a little bit more.

“The intensity wasn’t given to me--I already had it.”

Vargas, who just turned 18 and is a hard-slugging medal prospect in the 147-pound division, says these words at his typical rat-a-tat pace, spitting out clauses and sentences as his mind races ahead to the next thought, the next idea, the next bit of action.

The Olympics? For Vargas, that’s just the next bunch of guys waiting to get run over by his power and gusto.

From his childhood, those who know him well say, Vargas has always bustled with relentless energy, and boxing was his release and his ticket to stardom.

“I remember we lived on the other side of Oxnard, which is close to the beach, and Fernando lives on that side too,” said professional junior-lightweight contender Robert Garcia, whose father, Eduardo, is also Vargas’ trainer.

“I’d drive to the gym, and there comes Fernando running. I’d think, ‘Look at this boy, he really likes boxing!’ That was his first week at the gym.”

Said Eduardo Garcia, through a translator: “He was a misguided youth, in everything, boxing too. There was more work in guiding him than there was in boxing. If I hadn’t put that work into guiding him, he would have been either dead or in jail.

“He was aggressive, he was wild, but that’s why we gave him attention, because that’s the grace of a good trainer, to take someone who doesn’t have guidance and give it to him.”

Garcia stayed with him, and Vargas progressed rapidly through the junior divisions as an amateur, slowly blending bits and pieces of defense to add to his natural aggression and punching power.

And as he grew from local prodigy to nationally ranked emerging star to the youngest-ever U.S. champion two years ago at age 16, Vargas began to realize that being in the spotlight was a warm and comfortable place.

“I’d fight if it was for free--it’s not for the money,” Vargas said. “I think I drive off of the fame. I want to be known as the baddest, greatest fighter that ever lived. That’s what I train for, that’s what I live for.”

Garcia, 21, cracks a wide smile when he speaks about his young stablemate’s quest for fame.

“When he started boxing, he always saw me getting the attention,” Garcia said. “And that’s one thing Fernando doesn’t like. One thing that Fernando likes is him getting the attention.”

Said Manuel Herrera, a long-time volunteer at La Colonia Youth Boxing Club, the Oxnard gym the elder Garcia runs: “Fernando loves publicity. When he was a kid watching Robert fight, he’d be seeing the attention Robert was getting and ask me, ‘Does anybody want to come over here and talk to me?’

“And later, when he was winning more fights, he’d say, ‘Manny, now does anybody talk to me?’ And I just said, ‘Eventually, Fernando, eventually.’

“Now that he’s getting it, it’s like he’s been waiting for it his whole life.”

*

The last thing Fernando Vargas wants to do is jump onto center stage, only to fall under someone else’s shadow.

That’s why the surest way to stop Vargas’ tumbling commentary is to mention his Los Angeles-area Mexican-American Olympic predecessor, Oscar De La Hoya.

“Ooooooh, he hates that,” said Vargas’ friend, Freddie Flores. “Definitely hates that. He thinks De La Hoya hasn’t fought a good fighter yet. De La Hoya fights the guys whose time is over.”

Further trying to distance himself, Vargas makes it clear that he is from Oxnard, not Los Angeles--and that he plans to stay at home, an implicit knock on De La Hoya’s move out of East L.A. to Montebello, then Whittier.

“Since the beginning, I’ve always wanted to put Oxnard on the map and represent Oxnard,” said Vargas, who recently graduated from Channel Islands High. “I’m always going to stay here, I’m always going to live in Oxnard. Hopefully, if everything goes good in boxing, I’ll have houses everywhere. But I do want to have a big house in Oxnard. This is where I grew up, and this is where people have supported me.”

Vargas, when feeling especially tired of the are-you-the-next-Oscar questions, has derided De La Hoya, implying that the East Los Angeles-born boxer doesn’t fight aggressively enough to win over the local Latino fight community.

When a friend of his shows Vargas a watch with De La Hoya’s picture on it, Vargas spins away, shaking his head in disbelief.

“I’m my own fighter,” Vargas said. “Oscar De La Hoya made his accomplishments, and I’m going to make mine.

“Hopefully, one day, I’m going to be able to fight him, and that’s one of my goals. That’s one thing that I don’t like, to be mentioned like that. I know I will be, but hopefully that will end after the Olympics and I make a name for myself.”

Said advisor and family friend Rolando Arellano: “I think he can be bigger than De La Hoya. He has the desire to give back to the community, and the allegation about Mr. De La Hoya is that he hasn’t. He’s heavier in weight, and he’s very marketable. If not the equivalent, he’ll be bigger than De La Hoya.”

Having moved from 132 to 139 and now to the welterweight limit of 147 in two years--and after having become the first fighter to hold the No. 1 U.S. ranking in three weight classes--the broad-shouldered Vargas says he’s going to stay at welterweight for a while.

Vargas is 5 feet 9, two inches shorter than the 23-year-old De La Hoya, currently at 140 pounds, and Vargas’ thicker body and brawling fight style is a vast contrast to De La Hoya’s counterpunching outside firepower.

On this last day at La Colonia, Vargas, barely bothering with defense, throws scores of body-jolting power shots at Mario Solorio, a local cruiserweight, as the gym crowd observes with appreciation.

“This guy, he’s not getting paid for this, he just likes coming in here for the work,” Garcia said of Solorio. “But Fernando, he doesn’t take it easy on anybody.”

If Vargas wins a medal in Atlanta, he knows that, with De La Hoya soon rising to welterweight, a De La Hoya-Vargas bout is almost inevitable--and supremely profitable.

“I’d like to fight De La Hoya not too soon after the Olympics,” Vargas said. “I want to build at least 20 fights, 25 fights, and hopefully I’ll be able to do it. Oscar would love that, and I would love that too. It’d be ’92 vs. ’96.”

De La Hoya’s outside, easy-to-see style was perfect for Olympic scoring, in which a clean jab counts the same as a knockdown punch. Vargas’ style has sometimes been unrewarded (he has lost on points in three high-profile matches the last two years) by the amateur scoring system; his digging body shots often aren’t seen clearly by the judges.

Vargas, who has a quick, brutal left hook and a buckling overhand right, is a slow starter who looks for the knockout, which can be asking for trouble in three-round amateur bouts. It is also why many professional trainers believe he is a far better pro prospect than he is to win the gold medal.

“I definitely have a pro style,” Vargas said. “I have to speed everything up 100% to an amateur style. I mean, it’s good to have quick combinations, but I like to take my time pacing myself, and then connect when I can hurt him.

“As long as I throw a lot of hard, effective shots, they start feeling the pressure and they don’t really like to come in as much. And when I see them hurt, I put everything together. But, I don’t like to go away from the body, even though they [sometimes] don’t count body shots. If you hurt them to the body, you can take them out.”

*

For 72 hours last winter, Vargas was not a candidate to make the Olympic team.

In the wake of countless approaches by prospective managers, a Times report brought to light a contract with Ventura agents Robert Troy Caron and Don Lukens, signed by Vargas’ mother and Eduardo Garcia, that promised to pay $20,000 to sign and $4,000 a month through the Olympics, plus training expenses and bonuses.

Vargas was temporarily suspended by the U.S. Olympic Committee, and suddenly, the whole Olympic dream was in jeopardy.

“Fernando wasn’t aware of [the contract], however, he was reaping some of the benefits of it, because he was receiving some training expenses,” said Arellano, who was assigned the task of restoring Vargas’ amateur status and Olympic eligibility.

“Basically, my job was to rescind the contract and to make sure all parties who signed this contract made affidavits that they were all rescinding the contract. And that had to happen very quickly.

“Fernando’s position was, ‘Well, I didn’t have anything to do with it, this was an agreement made by some other parties, why should I bear the consequences?’

“That was a very troubling time. One of the most frightening factors was that a resolution had to be created so rapidly.”

Said Eduardo Garcia: “I really wasn’t aware of what the legal factors were. I knew there was a problem, and the attorneys resolved it.”

Vargas, who prides himself on being aware of everything that happens in his career, says the episode was a wake-up call--and a reminder of just how important Olympic glory will be to his future as a fighter.

“Amateur status is very important,” Vargas said. “Without it, I’d be a pro, fighting for what, $100 a fight? But, after the Olympics, I know I can make millions.”