THE BIGGER, THE BETTER : Boxing Appears to Have Gotten the Message, Resulting in a Knockout Bunch of Fights, Beginning With Whitaker-De La Hoya Saturday in Las Vegas

Boxing, the ultimate sport of the ultimate, savage showdown, sure hasn’t produced many of them lately.

You had to wince through a hundred Moorer-Botha or Lewis-McCall embarrassments--and watch Bowe-Lewis or Tyson-Foreman mega-matches fall apart amid fevered negotiations--to get a Tyson-Holyfield epic.

You waited for a Chavez-Whitaker rematch for so long, both eased and wheezed toward retirement before our eyes.

And let’s see, that last serious battle for pound-for-pound supremacy, Roy Jones Jr. blasting James Toney, happened in November of . . . 1994?

Why do so many prominent fighters mosey into a big-time fight about as often as the country changes presidents?

“I don’t understand why nobody wants to fight anybody,” said Oscar De La Hoya, one member of the fight caste who has been eager to line up major match-ups. “I have no idea.

“People are tired of seeing these mismatches and fights that just don’t excite anybody, you know?”

Tired enough to stop buying the bad fights, tired enough to even wake up the mismatch-makers and mischief-makers and get some momentum rolling again.

Against the odds and the flow of recent history, here comes a rumbling renaissance.

Invigorated by Evander Holyfield’s massive upset of Tyson last November and prodded into life by a string of recent flops, De La Hoya’s highly anticipated April 12 bout against Pernell Whitaker kicks off a three-month burst of high-profile activity.

On May 3, Holyfield and Tyson stage their rematch; and on June 27 is the power-hitting special, Terry Norris vs. Felix Trinidad.

Toss in the Junior Jones-Marco Antonio Barrera rematch on April 18, and the Danny Romero-Johnny Tapia grudge match, tentatively set for July 18, and suddenly, this sport no longer is staging its best skirmishes in courtrooms or parking lots.

“You picked a bad year to say that there aren’t any big fights any more,” said Lou DiBella of HBO, the network sponsoring much of the action.

“I think there’s a realization among the promoters, managers and fighters that in order to pique public interest and to make the paydays they want and for the TV networks to get anything out of it, fights of magnitude have to occur.

“Last year was a very bad year for boxing. But this year, not even before half the year is over, is going to be very, very good.”

In 1996, there were riots and raw deals, a powerful De La Hoya victory over Julio Cesar Chavez in June, the Holyfield masterpiece in November, and not much else.

The presumed pound-for-pound best fighter, Jones, fought four times against fighters old and overmatched, won four times, and nobody cared. He followed that up this year with a disqualification loss to Montell Griffin, and nobody cared about that, either.

The No. 2 pound-for-pound fighter, Whitaker, kept waiting for his first prestige fight since his controversial draw with Chavez in September 1993. Nobody even wants to talk about the heavyweight with the most promise, Riddick Bowe. And nobody wanted to watch him, especially given the poor pay-per-view numbers after Bowe’s much-hyped rematch with Andrew Golota in December.

“The public is saying, ‘Look, if you give us these interim fights and we don’t find them interesting, go to hell,’ ” said Bob Arum, De La Hoya’s promoter. “Bowe-Golota II went into the toilet.

“If the public doesn’t care, nobody’s going to watch. So people are learning. Felix Trinidad and Terry Norris, nobody cares about them except if they fight each other.”

Arum points to the public souring on Jones as the prime example of a fighter who has wasted himself with highly paid, low-risk fights on HBO.

According to Arum, results of an HBO survey of its subscribers revealed that 90% recognized George Foreman, 78% De La Hoya, 45% Whitaker and only 30% Jones.

“That wasn’t the way we did business in the ‘70s and ‘80s; it was just recently this nonsense began,” Arum said. “This whole series of fights didn’t help Roy Jones, it didn’t help HBO. What good was it all?

“I could have taken that route and put Oscar in with the bum of the month on HBO, but Oscar didn’t want it and I didn’t want it.”

What has clogged up the machinery the last few years?

Mostly, say some involved, the major sanctioning bodies, yearning to maintain hold of power, have gone out of their way to prevent unification bouts and been eager to strip any champion who doesn’t toe the line.

Also, it’s difficult to broker a big fight when promoter Don King--who controls Tyson, Trinidad, Chavez, Norris and the Showtime cable network (and for at least one more fight, Holyfield)--is at loggerheads with practically everybody else in the business and is reaping huge rewards while keeping his main fighters away from danger.

King, of course, isn’t the only power figure to protect his fighters, only the most powerful.

“Fortunately, Bob Arum and I are at a situation in this business where if Oscar loses or if Pernell loses, we won’t be out of business,” said Dino Duva, Whitaker’s promoter.

“From our standpoint, Pernell Whitaker is at the point of his career where we’ve made a commitment to him to just get the biggest fight possible. Pernell deserves this kind of a fight.”

But King also provided a boost to the man leading the surge back toward respectable meetings of respected fighters--Holyfield, who has emerged from multiple defeats, ill health and presumed irrelevance to the top spot in the boxing pantheon.

“Evander’s an incredible man,” Duva said. “I mean, Evander proved to people that the belt isn’t what’s important. It’s just being intent on proving that you’re the best and fighting your way to it.”

Holyfield will earn $35 million on May 3.

Does anybody care that the winner of Holyfield-Tyson II will hold only one of the three major heavyweight title belts and will be recognized by none of the IBO-WBF-IBC nonsense organizations that have popped up in the chaos?

“The organizations have actually degraded themselves so much by their ratings and phony rules that they’ve made the fighters realize that the titles aren’t as important,” Duva said.

“Now, what’s the most important is the best matchup--and fortunately, TV networks like HBO have supported those kinds of fights.”

Said DiBella of HBO: “People don’t tune in to watch belts, they don’t tune in to watch the alphabet soups. IBO, IBF, IBC, WBA, WBO, you could walk into the ring right now with a Perry Ellis belt and who’d know the difference or care? Fighters make the fight.”

The way the big fights happen, says trainer Teddy Atlas, is if the money makes them happen. And right now, the money is in marquee bouts.

But, he says, once this generation of top fighters gets satiated with cash, the sluggish days will return.

“In the old days, you had no choice, guys were hungry, and it was OK to lose a fight, because you were learning your trade, moving towards a goal, which was to be the best fighter in the world,” Atlas said. “Now, that’s no longer a goal.

“It’s about making the most money in the world. They want glossy records, want undefeated records, and they don’t care as much about quality as much as presumption of quality. That’s deleted the work ethic, the mind set, the passion and it’s made it a whole different kind of ballgame.

“Guys can be jockeyed into 15-0 records without really becoming a fighter, and they can get a payday, and that’s all they want.”

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(Southland Edition) WHITAKER vs. DE LA HOYA

WHO: Oscar De La Hoya vs. Pernell Whitaker

WHERE: Thomas & Mack Center, Las Vegas.

WHEN: Saturday, main event about 8:15 p.m.

WHY: For Whitaker’s World Boxing Council welterweight title.

WHY II: For money. De La Hoya gets $10 million, Whitaker $6 million.

WAY TO SEE IT: Pay-per-view, TVKO.