Clancy Won’t Run Away From De La Hoya Rumors

Gil Clancy wasn’t fired.

He quit.

Well, which story would you expect the veteran boxing trainer to tell?

In this case, though, I believe it’s true. Or at least as close to true as anything ever is in boxing. Or in the dysfunctional Oscar De La Hoya camp.

I called Clancy on Thursday at his Long Island home, seeking his response to repeated suggestions from those around De La Hoya that Clancy was dismissed as assistant trainer because he allegedly devised the run-and-hide strategy in the last four rounds last September against Felix Trinidad.

Clancy, more perplexed than angry, denied that too.

“I keep reading that in the paper, but if you look at the tape, you’ll see that I never told Oscar to run away the last three or four rounds,” he said. “Never.”

Besides, he said, if the triumvirate behind De La Hoya--promoter Bob Arum, father Joel De La Hoya and trainer Robert Alcazar--had been so displeased with his work in the corner, why did they want him back there for Saturday night’s fight at Madison Square Garden between De La Hoya and Derrell Coley?

Good question.

“I told them no,” said Clancy, who began working with De La Hoya in December 1997, six fights ago. “They offered me a lot less money than I had been getting. They hired me one week before the fight against Wilfredo Rivera, and they wanted to pay me less money for this fight than for that one. Bob Arum said their reasoning was that since this fight was in New York, I wouldn’t have to come out to the training camp in Big Bear.

“From the kind of money Oscar makes, it doesn’t make any sense for them to argue with me over a few dollars.”

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Arum wasn’t available for comment Thursday, but his version, according to conversations others have had with him, is essentially the same as Clancy’s.

The reason, they said, that Clancy was asked to work only the week of the fight in New York instead of also during the camp in Big Bear was out of concern for his health. He had complained in the past that he had trouble sleeping there because of the altitude.

As for the strategy that cost De La Hoya the Trinidad fight and continues to be scrutinized five months later, we might never know for sure who deserves blame.

Clancy said that neither he nor Alcazar advised De La Hoya to turn defensive. He said the fighter himself determined that he was far enough ahead on the judges’ scorecards that he no longer had to force the action.

“He told me afterward that he was in a groove, that he was really enjoying making the guy look bad,” Clancy said. “He figured he had him beat.”

Clancy doesn’t dispute that point of view.

It’s only that he, having had five decades of experience with judges, would have told De La Hoya to take nothing for granted.

But now that Clancy is no longer in the camp, he said he believes it has become convenient for him to be the scapegoat.

De La Hoya, to his credit, has accepted responsibility for the loss, although still not acknowledging that he did lose, and said that Clancy was fired because of confusion in the corner.

If that were the case, Clancy said, De La Hoya should have fired his brother, Joel Jr., and cut man Chuck Bodak because they caused the confusion. Clancy said he and Alcazar never had a disagreement.

“We had an understanding that, whatever I saw during fights, I would tell Robert, and he would tell Oscar,” Clancy said. “I tried to follow that pretty closely.

“If there was some excitement in the corner it was because I was telling Joel and Chuck Bodak to stop shouting at Oscar. What did Chuck Bodak have to say that Oscar needed to hear? He’s a cut man, not a trainer. I guess they resented me.”

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For his part, Clancy said he resents no one, especially not De La Hoya, who claimed to have been the trainer’s only supporter when a vote was taken within the camp on whether to fire him.

Clancy would have preferred to hear that from De La Hoya.

“I haven’t heard from anyone in that camp except Bob Arum,” Clancy said.

In response to his earlier question, I suggested that one reason he might have been asked to return is because of concern over whether Alcazar can command the corner alone.

Clancy, clearly uncomfortable with that line of questioning, commended the embattled trainer for his work in the gym. He was evasive, however, when I asked about Alcazar’s work in the corner.

Instead, Clancy predicted an easy victory Saturday night, saying he expects De La Hoya to “look like a million dollars.”

The 78-year-old trainer said he will be watching on HBO, plugging the network for which he does boxing commentary. It’s the only job he has now. He said he doesn’t need another.

“All the years I’ve had in the business, all the fighters and champions I’ve worked with, I don’t think this is going to hurt my reputation at all,” he said. “But so what? I’m too old to worry about my reputation.”

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Randy Harvey can be reached at his e-mail address: randy.harvey@latimes.com.