Trinidad and Vargas to Meet Dec. 2

Don King, of all people, said it was time to stop talking.

“If we don’t get this signed pretty soon,” he said, “we’re not going to have time to promote.”

The subject was a Felix Trinidad-Fernando Vargas 154-pound title match. The time was two months ago.

Not to worry.

On Monday, with all the haggling exhausted, the contracts were signed and on Wednesday the formal announcement was made.

Trinidad (38-0, 31 knockouts), the World Boxing Assn. champion from Puerto Rico, and Vargas (20-0, 18 knockouts), the International Boxing Federation titleholder from Oxnard, will meet Dec. 2 in a pay-per-view bout at Las Vegas’ Mandalay Bay Events Center.

While both fighters have superior skills, the best the 154-pound division has to offer, both must deal with lingering doubts that could be dispelled with a victory.

Trinidad’s biggest victories came against Oscar De La Hoya last year at 147 pounds and against David Reid this year at 154. The triumph over De La Hoya, on a majority decision, came because De La Hoya quit fighting in the final three rounds after building a big lead. The victory over Reid, the only U.S. gold-medal winner at the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta, came in Reid’s 15th professional fight, leaving many to wonder if he had been pushed too quickly.

Now comes Vargas, who has been fighting professionally only since 1997. Is he also being pushed too quickly?

“I’ve heard that question about a hundred times,” Vargas said at a Wednesday news conference in New York. “Every time I’m not supposed to win, every time I’m not supposed to beat the veterans, I win and I outclass them.”

Outclassing Yory Boy Campas and Ike Quartey, as Vargas has done in the past, is one thing. Outclassing Trinidad would be quite another.