HOME-GROWN FIGHTERS

Oscar De La Hoya and Shane Mosley grew up just 20 miles apart in urban sprawl towns with their share of tough neighborhoods and dead-end youths.

Neither had much opportunity to get into trouble, though. They grew up in tight-knit families and their fathers, both former boxers, kept their sons off the street and in the gym.

“My older son was in boxing, and when Oscar was 6 or 7, he told me he would like to box some just for fun,” Joel De La Hoya said. “So I took him to the gym with us, never dreaming that all this would happen, that he would become a champion.”

Jack Mosley, Shane’s father, trainer and manager, recalled taking his son to the gym when he was in the fourth grade. “He took to it immediately, wanted to go back, loved being there.”

Both youngsters became outstanding fighters. The once-beaten De La Hoya and the undefeated Mosley meet June 17 at Staples Center in Los Angeles for the WBC welterweight championship.

The bout matching the two East Los Angeles-area natives shapes up as by far the richest ever in California, with Staples Center expected to draw a sellout crowd of 20,000 and gross between $7.5 million to $8 million. By contrast, the 1973 Muhammad Ali-Ken Norton fight at the Forum in Inglewood grossed around $500,000.

De La Hoya, 27, is guaranteed $8 million and Mosley $4.5 million, with the paychecks expected to go substantially higher with their cuts of TV money.

All their sons’ fame and money aside, Joel De La Hoya and Jack Mosley seem more proud of the way Oscar and Shane turned out--both boxers are articulate, personable and well-mannered.

“Both of them have strong father figures,” promoter Bob Arum said. “Both are very respectful, even of each other. It shows that boxing doesn’t have to be thuggery and insults and bad behavior.

“I think Oscar and Shane are both legitimate role models, athletes that deserve to have young people look up to them.”

Joel De La Hoya apparently was a more traditional father, with a distinct parent-son relationship, while Jack Mosley was more a soccer-pop type, heavily involved when Shane was young and remaining that way now as his trainer and manager.

“I made sure he was in school and watched the kind of friends he had,” Oscar’s father said. “I told him that good people were the right people for him, not bad people. He’s grown now, but he’s still my son and I love him, and I love my older son and my daughter.

“I believe they respect me, and I respect them.”

Said Oscar: “My father was behind me all the time and would tell me right from wrong and guide me. He would push me to go to the gym or he would take me himself. My father wasn’t involved like Shane’s father. He wouldn’t train me, but he would give me pointers. But I think it was similar to Shane’s father and son relationship.”

Oscar’s father is staying at the boxer’s home, which has training and sparring facilities, in the mountain resort of Big Bear.

“He is the only person I listen to. He makes me train harder,” Oscar said.

Jack Mosley, who said his father worked nights and wasn’t around much for him, promised himself that he would always be available for his children.

“I was always at school, at their sports, everybody knew me. I almost always knew what my kids were doing,” Jack said after his son sparred a few rounds at their training camp, a gym in Big Bear a few miles from De La Hoya’s house.

“My children always knew they could talk to me or their mother about anything. The communication, that’s the important thing.”

When his children were young, Jack drove them to the Skid Row area of downtown Los Angeles and told them: “Look at these people, a lot of them are here because they gave up hope. You have choices in life and they, for alcohol, drugs or whatever reason, made the wrong choices.”

Shane Mosley, 28, said his relationship with his father really hasn’t changed much since he was a child.

“It’s always been the same way it is now. I always spoke to him the same way. All the hype and money, I could push all that aside and still have my family. That’s more important to me,” he said.