Chavez Fits Bill as Money Fighter

Having completed my assignment, which was to visit the training camp of Julio Cesar Chavez and discern his strategy for Friday’s rematch with Oscar De La Hoya, I offer the following conclusions:

He will attempt to run.

He will attempt to hide.

He will eat expensive ice cream.

He will party hard.

What Julio Cesar Chavez will not do, apparently, is box.

During my 24 hours at his training site last month, not once did he pick up a glove.

For only a couple of hours did he actually leave the bedroom of his rented house.

He did not jog, did not spar, did not lift weights, did not even break a sweat, except perhaps when fleeing down a back staircase to avoid a reporter who had been waiting in his living room for 6 1/2 hours to conduct a previously arranged interview.

It also being my assignment to comment on this strategy, I offer the following:

Spend $39.95 to buy the telecast for any fight involving this childish grandfather, and you are a bigger dope than he is.

“This time, he will start running. This time, he will be scared like a dog. This time, when the fight ends, his face will not be clean.”

Julio Cesar Chavez has aged more than two hard years since his first fight with Oscar De La Hoya, yet his promises are the same.

Still loud, dramatic, and as transparent as the skin on his 36-year-old face.

It was a cut above Chavez’s left eye that led to De La Hoya’s fourth-round TKO victory in their first bout June 7, 1996, a cut for which Chavez offered a dozen excuses.

He said his 6-year-old son had done it before the fight. He said his sparring partner had caused it before the fight. Now he is saying that De La Hoya’s foul play during the fight caused it.

“You didn’t see the head butt?” he asked.

The real reason for the TKO is, of course, much less complicated and contrived.

De La Hoya is younger, quicker, stronger, and finally deserving of the respect of a Mexican American contingency that previously has turned its back on his too-pretty face.

Not that Chavez, or his many Southland fans, will ever acknowledge it.

Why De La Hoya is still booed by neighbors who begrudge him his success becomes even more of a mystery once you visit his fan-approved rival.

Chavez still claims, “I am a boxer for the people. I am one of them.”

Yet how many of his “people” would take $6 million for a job--this De La Hoya fight--they obviously had no intention of finishing?

How many of his “people” would routinely treat his public as rudely as Chavez, whose rented mountainside home in this small resort town was recently visited by an elderly man and his wife from Denver?

They had gotten lost, taking six hours to make a two-hour trip. They’d heard Chavez built a boxing ring in his garage, they wanted to spend a few minutes watching him spar before making the return trip.

One of Chavez’s many assistants shrugged and told them this would be impossible, that Chavez would not allow any outsiders to watch him work.

It turns out, that’s because he doesn’t always work.

When promoter Bob Arum is there with his checkbook, it’s a different story. When I arrived on a Tuesday afternoon to complete arrangements for the Wednesday interview, Chavez was charming.

In a living room crowded with some of the 14 friends and relatives living with him in this 3,800-square-foot home, he bounced 9-year-old son Omar on his lap while watching a video of Omar’s debut fight in Mexico.

When asked what else he does to relax, he went outside and pitched a baseball on the sidewalk, even showing a nasty curve, laughing in delight as the batter bailed out in fear.

“Julio is, well, Julio,” said Arum, smiling at the unpredictability that has helped Chavez become so popular.

Yet at some point during these last days of his career, that wondrous spontaneity has apparently been overtaken by the desperation of a man seeking one more payday.

The moment Arum left on that Tuesday, Chavez’s mood changed. He frowned, disappeared upstairs, and was not seen by me again.

I was told to meet him Wednesday for early-morning jogging. He never showed.

His camp claimed that, despite only partly cloudy skies, they could not run in the rain.

I was told to meet him for noon sparring. He never showed.

“He is resting,” said one of his aides softly. “Athletes need their rest.”

I was told he would spar at 4 p.m. I remained at the house through the afternoon, hanging out on the porch, talking with more members of his bored entourage. He never showed.

I was told that, now, he would spar at 6 p.m. I ate dinner with his gracious family, waited like everyone else. And he never showed.

Finally, a sign of life. Someone came into the house carrying huge bags of Haagen-Dazs ice cream bars, Chavez’s favorite. Some were brought up to him.

Finally, there was hope. Maybe the sweets would give him the energy to leave his bedroom and come downstairs.

They did. But he came down through a hidden staircase that led to a van that whisked him away when few were looking.

An hour later, his embarrassed doctor called me into the kitchen, apologized, and said he had just learned that his fighter was headed down the road to a party.

“Who knows when he will be home?” the doctor asked. “Who ever knows?”

Which prompts the question: If he behaves like this when being visited by somebody trying to promote the fight, what does he do when nobody is there?

So I left, passing the neighboring Montessori and child-care center on the way out.

Nikki Stephens, a worker there, said Chavez’s children and other younger relatives were constantly running up to their shared fence and shooting at her children with cap guns.

“We don’t let our kids play with guns, so they just stand there and get shot,” she said. “What are you gonna do?”

Chavez will be equally as loud Friday in Las Vegas. Here’s guessing he will be equally as harmless.