After a Near Tragedy, a Recent Engagement and the Prospect of Fatherhood, De La Hoya Gets a. . . : Reality Check

The car accident. The marriage proposal. The baby.

Oscar De La Hoya is still only 24, still occasionally reckless and restless and self-absorbed, and still wildly wealthy.

But, sifted into this gilded dream, suddenly, is the grown-up reality: There is a baby on the way, maybe his; there is a fiancee, who immediately had to deal with the fact he may have recently impregnated a former girlfriend; and there is the rest of his family to take care of, maybe forever.

These facts, he and his closest friends say as the World Boxing Council welterweight champion gets set for a $9-million payday against Hector Camacho on Saturday at Thomas & Mack Center, have forcibly kick-started De La Hoya on a necessary journey toward a responsible, respectable adult life.

Not just a boxing life--a real, complete, frustrating, fulfilling, diaper-changing, bill-paying, bring-home-the-bacon life.

In June, he narrowly avoided a potentially fatal car crash. A few weeks after that, he asked his teenage girlfriend to marry him, and she said yes. And this month, a previous girlfriend made a claim--so far unchallenged by De La Hoya--that he is the father of her unborn child, due in a few months.

“It’s all happening now,” De La Hoya said recently. “Things always happen to me for a reason. If it is my baby, I’m going to take care of him and it’s going to change my life a lot, but for the better.

“Hey, it’s time to settle down . . . not settle down completely, but just change my lifestyle around a bit. I’ve lived a pretty fast life, you know? I can slow down, just a bit.”

It is time, say those closest to him. Joe Pajar, De La Hoya’s best friend since high school, is married with twin babies. Joel, De La Hoya’s older brother, has a son.

De La Hoya has said the words before, and has taken more control over his business operations the past few years. But until recently, he hadn’t been pushed toward settling his personal life--almost everything in his mind was unsettled, transitory and essentially empty.

For all these years, De La Hoya had only his career--and the nocturnal activities of a young, eligible millionaire--and it was enough.

But as his boxing earning power reaches an apex--he could earn more than $30 million in 1997, with a chance at earning over $60 million in his career--his long, loosey-goosey adolescence is about over.

“We’re all growing up,” said Pajar, who, for a change, spent little time in Big Bear with De La Hoya for this camp, preferring to immerse himself in other areas by running De La Hoya’s office from East L.A. “I mean, we still go out together, and everything’s still the same. But we have responsibilities now. And he’s going to have one soon.

“He’s going to realize how everything is. He’s going to go through everything I went through with the kids . . . and I feel happy for him. I hope everything goes well for him like it’s gone well for me.

“He needs that. He feels lonely sometimes so he needs somebody to be with him a lot of times. He needs a baby . . . someone he could be with all the time. So he can be doing it for something now--for himself and his family.”

This is not the first time De La Hoya has experienced paternity questions--he admits he has carelessly led a distinctly non-monastic lifestyle, and says he remembers three or four other women who made claims. But those claims never fully materialized, he says, not like this one.

De La Hoya says he will accept immediate financial responsibility for the child--and the mother’s medical costs--and wait until after the birth for a blood test to determine paternity.

“If it is mine, I would want to be around the baby 24 hours a day--full custody,” De La Hoya said. “Because I know I can take care of a baby. I know she can’t. . . . I know I will.”

Said his older brother, Joel: “He only wants to box for a couple more years. And I think he’s ready. I would love to see him settle down myself. I’ve got my woman and I have my kid. And then I see him, and he’s with his buddies . . . there’s something missing. That’s like a void in his life right now.”

Can a fighter in his prime, with a schedule set to earn him mega-millions and march him into history, settle down and take care of a baby?

“We would have to hire a nanny, you know? No big deal,” said De La Hoya, who has no intentions of suspending his boxing career. “Get a bigger home, extend the home. . . . It’ll make it better. He’ll say, ‘Poppy! I want to fight!’

“Oh, it’s a lot of responsibility. But I’m willing to do it. We need a change up here in camp. We need a new face. At first, I was surprised, and then I thought, ‘Wow, it’s going to be good.’ My brother has a kid and every time I’m around him it’s the best feeling.”

The most difficult part of the situation, De La Hoya said, was explaining it to his fiancee, whom he does not want to name publicly, at least for now. She is 18, from Orange County, lives with her parents and is wearing a giant diamond engagement ring.

He sees the irony: Oscar De La Hoya finally commits to a woman--and then a result of his less-than-demure past instantly arises.

“When I told her, I thought she was going to be upset at me . . . about the baby and all that,” De La Hoya said. “And she wasn’t upset. She goes, ‘Oh, I understand there’s so many women out there like that.’

“We’re still together and everything. Oh man, I thought she was going to say, ‘It’s over!’ ”

His fiancee’s calm reaction, De La Hoya said, was further proof to him that he had found the woman he had always wanted: someone who understands that his life as an athlete is often bizarre, and who is willing to stay in the background during his high-profile endeavors.

“Man, it almost has to be like a hunch,” De La Hoya said. “Sometimes, I kind of test them, you know, to see if they’re interested in money . . . she passed the test.

“I want her very low profile--less problems. And she told me too, ‘I don’t want to be a picture in the news, I don’t want anybody to know me.’ ”

For now, the wedding--tentatively scheduled for May--has been delayed to sort everything out.

“Everything’s fine, it’s just this incident came up and, hey, we’ve got to take responsibility and be a man about it,” De La Hoya said. “I’m not running away from it, not at all.

“I thought I would be ready to get married next year. But I’m not. I explained to her, the way I want my career to go, for ‘98, then ‘99, it’s just impossible. I told her I’d rather just keep it the way it is--just be very busy, with a baby, and she was OK with it.”

Even before he found out he could become a father soon, De La Hoya had altered his career path. Instead of fighting only a couple more years, until he was 26 or 27 as he had planned since the start of his career, De La Hoya says he hopes to fight five more years.

Why? To make sure he has time to solidify his position at the very top of the sport--near Muhammad Ali, Sugar Ray Leonard, Joe Louis and a handful of others--and to gather up as much money as possible to make sure his father, brother, younger sister and family members beyond that never worry about their finances.

De La Hoya says he wants titles in seven weight classes, one more than he had planned since the beginning of his career five years ago. So far, he has won titles in four divisions, but doesn’t plan to move up from the 147-pound limit to the junior-middleweight class (154 pounds) until the middle of 1998 at the earliest.

The trigger to this new resolve, De La Hoya says, was his experience on the 605 Freeway near his condominium in Whittier, when the brand-new Mercedes he was driving suddenly stalled in the fast lane and only a quick decision to leave the car saved him from an oncoming truck.

“The accident I had, that just changed everything,” said De La Hoya, who added that Ceci, his 15-year-old sister, was particularly affected by his experience with danger. “I kind of saw how . . . if it was all over right there and then, what is my family left with, how is my family going to live?

“I’m fighting Camacho, I have some big fights ahead of me with [Felix] Trinidad and we’re talking [Terry] Norris. . . . I’ve got to make the most of this.

“I want four more years in boxing. That’s what I want. That’s what I can see. When I’m 29, I can retire.”

And then, quite possibly, he can become one of the richest doting fathers ever, with time to kill and money to spend.

“He’s going to be good--because well, having a father like him, that kid’s going to have everything he wants,” Pajar said. “Oh yeah, he’s going to be a spoiled kid because he’s always wanted a baby. He loves babies so much.

“He wants to be part of it, he wants his own babies now. He wants to feel happy like us.”

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

The Facts

* WHAT: Oscar De La Hoya, East Los Angeles, vs. Hector Camacho, Puerto Rico, 12 rounds, for De La Hoya’s WBC welterweight title.

* WHEN, WHERE: Saturday, Thomas & Mack Center, Las Vegas

* RECORDS: De La Hoya, 25-0, 21 knockouts; Camacho, 64-3-1, 32 knockouts.

* TV: TVKO (DirecTV), 6 p.m. (undercard)