SPLIT DECISION

Once you get past the tourist with a giant boxing glove posing in front of the sculpture of two giant breasts, everything becomes clear.

Tonight is still about boxing.

For all its silliness, boxing is still about science.

Felix Trinidad represents the care and patience of a Jonas Salk.

Fernando Vargas is as nutty as Dr. Evil.

Trinidad wins in an 11-round technical knockout.

Vargas will one day be the world’s best pound-for-pound fighter. He will soon overtake Oscar De La Hoya as Los Angeles’ favorite pug.

He will be worthy of our attention, if not our cheers, a Mexican American from Oxnard who embraces his heritage and can connect neighborhoods like De La Hoya could not.

But it’s too soon. Vargas is too young. He’s too angry. He’s too desperate.

(Incidentally, there is no truth to the rumor that De La Hoya will sing the national anthem tonight while walking around the ring backward.)

Vargas, 22, badly wants to shatter through that Golden Boy ceiling and beat the champion that De La Hoya could not.

There is a sense that many of our city’s sports fans, weary of boxers who look like beauticians, want the same thing.

The problem is, when Vargas wants something this badly, he has often resorted to street fighting to get it.

He wanted acceptance as a youngster growing up without direction in a cluttered section of Oxnard.

“So I became a bully,” he recalled.

He wanted motivation against a variety of stiffs during the early steps of his four-year climb up boxing’s 154-pound ladder.

“So when my opponent wouldn’t say anything before the fight to make me mad, I would put a face on him, a face of someone I hated,” he said.

Staring at the docile mug of Trinidad, he will enter this bout the same way, wildly swinging at the specter of De La Hoya, punching furiously at the memory of the father who abandoned him, attempting a lifetime of revenge in 36 minutes.

He will turn the boxing ring at the Mandalay Bay Resort into a littered section of Las Vegas Boulevard.

At which point, Trinidad will turn him into a cheap buffet.

“With both fighters wanting to charge each other, the winner will be the one with the courage to take a step back,” promoter Don King said.

It is unbelievable that he actually makes sense. It is totally believable that Vargas would not be listening.

He will come out punching, hoping to knock down Trinidad like others have knocked him down. Maybe he will. Maybe, by the fifth round, more than once.

But then he will notice what many other great fighters have noticed. These knockdowns don’t make Trinidad weaker, but stronger.

Trinidad will begin pushing the weary Vargas around the ring, a left jab here, a right uppercut there, nicks and cuts and shoves.

Late in the fight, bruised and baffled, Vargas will stare at his shoes and say to himself, “I’ve got three more rounds of this?”

They have all said it. From De La Hoya to David Reid to Pernell Whitaker.

It might be no coincidence that Trinidad has defeated three Olympic gold-medal winners. Those guys are People magazine. He is Popular Mechanics.

There is not much known about Trinidad outside his native Puerto Rico. He is shy and speaks little English and has yet to buy into the hype that has elevated him to that teetering top of the boxing world.

In respect to this fight, though, there are only a few things you need to know.

Trinidad has won nearly twice as many fights (38) as Vargas (20).

Trinidad has won only two fewer title fights (18) than Vargas has won fights of any kind.

Yet at 27, he is only five years older than Vargas.

Perhaps the most important statistic is that, while both men are unbeaten, Vargas has never even been knocked down. He doesn’t know real pain. Therefore, he does not know patience.

Trinidad understands both, and it is this understanding that will carry him to victory before the exercise is complete.

When they parted ways after the final news conference here, Trinidad extended his fist for Vargas to tap as a sort of goodbye handshake.

Vargas glared at the fist, shook his head and kept his hands by his sides in obvious anger.

Trinidad just laughed. When Vargas later stalked away, he knew he had the kid right where he wanted him.

*

Bill Plaschke can be reached at his e-mail address: bill.plaschke@latimes.com.