Flurry of Fight Lessons Is Landed

The most famous man in the world entered Staples Center shortly before 7 p.m. Saturday.

Muhammad Ali stood in a tunnel, shaking visibly while waiting for a break in one of the undercard matches to go to his seat. The word of his arrival spread throughout the massive arena like a downwind wildfire. People strained to get a look, a peep, at a man who has become a pied piper in every part of the world he has visited. In the seats just above and adjacent to the tunnel where he stood, surrounded by family and security guards, people swarmed to get a closer look. An elderly man in a straw hat was knocked to the floor.

Soon, Ali was led toward his seat. The man who made the Ali Shuffle a part of the sports language, as perhaps the most celebrated and revered heavyweight champion of all time, did a different kind of a shuffle now, a slow, painful-to-watch movement that barely propelled him forward.

His eyes stared straight ahead, focusing on whatever they do now, all these years after all those blows to the head have rendered him damaged goods, ill, distant. He seems a fuzzy man in a sharply focused world.

The crowd was with him every step of the way. So were the cameramen walking backward only a few feet away, their bright lights searching the eyes to see if they could find anything. A couple of times, as if one of the disconnected wires sparked for a moment, Ali’s right hand lifted and his index finger pointed toward the loudest noise. Instinct told him they still adored him and they must be acknowledged.

But every move was slow, measured, painful to see. There was no floating like a butterfly, nor stinging like a bee.

The man who gave us rope-a-dope, who would fight 15 rounds and “still be pretty,” who gave us one of the saddest/warmest moments in the history of sports when he took the torch during the Opening Ceremony of the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta, who was touched along the way here by every person who dared to get close enough to do so and who was hugged along the way by everybody from Robert Shapiro to Dustin Hoffman, took nearly 20 minutes to get to his seat.

*

The most famous boxer in the world entered the ring at Staples Center about 1 1/2 hours after Ali.

Oscar De La Hoya is 27, the Golden Boy, the toast of the fight world and the meal ticket for so many people he has long ago quit keeping tabs. He just picks them up, a lot of them.

Certainly, the last thing on De La Hoya’s mind before the fight was Ali; Ali’s presence, Ali’s legacy, Ali’s state of health.

De La Hoya has millions. He has children, an Olympic gold medal, a gorgeous fiancee, a couple of other careers waiting and a public persona that, minus a few out-of-control trips to Cabo San Lucas, is highly favorable.

Before Saturday night, he has had 33 professional fights, probably more than that on the amateur level leading to his Olympic stardom. And in this Staples match, which left a sold-out house of 20,744 screaming and breathless, De La Hoya battled Shane Mosley to the end and went toe-to-toe with the brawler from Pomona. Afterward, when Mosley had been declared the upset winner and new champion, the statistics sheet showed that Mosley had landed 284 punches, most of them, obviously, to the head of De La Hoya.

Immediately after the fight, De La Hoya was asked the question that all fighters in his position are asked: Will there be a rematch? And, as all fighters who have just been beaten are programmed to say, De La Hoya said yes, said emphatically that there would be more, that the boxing world saw a great fight and deserved a repachage. Much later though, his tune changed and he sounded like a man about to retire.

*

Afterward, they streamed out of Staples, fired up and geared up. No matter who they had rooted for, they knew they got a great show. They had arrived in their limos and lycra earlier, stretch and spandex all along the curb on 11th street.

They had gone to their $1,000 ringside seats or their luxury suites above and had enjoyed this present-day Romans-in-the-Colosseum world, munching on their chicken legs and swallowing their imported beer while urging on the gladiators in the ring below.

It was a great night for the sporting public of Los Angeles, a great night for the people who fought through the usual L.A. political gridlock to bring us Staples and bring us back some civic vitality in the strangest of places: downtown.

At 6 p.m. on a Saturday night, the freeways in all directions in the downtown area were near gridlock. Caused by sports! The Dodgers had just finished, the fight card was going and L.A. had seen nothing like this for some time--with a Monday night NBA-title-clinch possible at Staples.

*

At the end, they had thrown a total of 1,396 punches at each other and had landed 541. In the last round, when both knew it was close and neither was willing to yield to the other, they flailed at each other like two guys trying to swim out of a raging river.

And when the bell sounded, they hugged. It was spontaneous. Nothing staged here. Obviously, they both respected each other’s effort.

Likely, neither was thinking about Ali, sitting ringside, watching, certainly absorbing. There was too much to be celebrated. Too much to be in wonder of. Too many bright lights and pretty girls and money and fame.

Mosley is 28, a year older than De La Hoya. He is the new champion. It has just begun for him.

The key for both, for Mosley and De La Hoya, something they certainly are not thinking about, is when it might end. And how.

For a reminder of the importance of that, all they needed to do was glance ringside.