What De La Hoya Needs Is Not Another Gatti, but a Legitimate Opponent--and a Promoter Like Arum.

That was fun, wasn’t it, watching a good-looking guy like Arturo Gatti having his face turned into a living, breathing, bleeding punching bag?

Many among the crowd of 12,692 at the MGM Grand Garden Arena on Saturday night must have enjoyed it because they booed lustily when Gatti’s corner mercifully interceded one minute and 16 seconds into the fifth round and forced the fight to be stopped.

My only question afterward about the proceedings in the ring was where Gatti’s corner was when the fight was signed. Didn’t his people know he was being set up as the foil in Oscar De La Hoya’s big comeback, the first Oscar party of the weekend?

The ring announcer, Michael Buffer, knew it. Instead of “Let’s get ready to rumble,” he could have said, “Let’s get ready to see a man punched in the face 195 times.” What he did say during the introductions was that Gatti is known as “the ultimate blood and guts warrior.”

Buffer is correct. Whenever Gatti enters the ring, he displays astonishing amounts of blood and guts. He was not a tough opponent for De La Hoya, but Gatti is a tough man. Don’t ever let anyone tell you different. I would never make sport of his inability to get his face out of the way of a punch. He’s the one who makes a sport of it.

The only thing that could be considered smart about his strategy Saturday night was that he made his face so easy to hit that De La Hoya forgot to go to the body.

During a news conference last week, Gatti walked out when a writer asked him if he ever considered having his corner put Band-Aids on his face before a fight, you know, to save time between rounds.

It wouldn’t have been a bad idea. The area around Gatti’s right eye was red and puffy less than two minutes into the first round. He was off his feet before the end of the round, after virtually standing still for six straight punches to the face in a flurry that began with a stunning left uppercut.

Gatti kept coming back for more, until everyone except the bloodthirsty among the crowd had seen enough. Now Gatti can collect his $1.4 million and retire, if he’s smart, which, of course, he isn’t.

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If you would like more analysis of the fight, you won’t find it here. There wasn’t much more to it. De La Hoya hit. Gatti got hit.

Besides, the fight had very little to do with Gatti. If he hadn’t agreed to be the opponent, De La Hoya’s new promoter, Jerry Perenchio, would have found another bleeder who would have.

The fight was billed as “The Return of the Hero.”

Where had De La Hoya gone? As best as I can tell, it was to the recording studio to cut an album. He did pretty well, earning a Grammy nomination, but that’s not an easy business, either, and he lost in the Latino Pop Album category to a Colombian singer named Shakira.

Life has definitely gotten tougher for the former Golden Boy. He also had lost two of his last three fights, to real opponents Felix Trinidad Jr. and Shane Mosley.

When De La Hoya returned nine months after the Mosley loss last summer at Staples Center, it was with a new promoter, a new trainer and a new cut man (who, I hope, was taking notes from Gatti’s corner.)

De La Hoya also has a new attitude. At least, that’s what he tells us. His theme last year was “four fights, four knockouts.” He quit after two fights. But he’s serious this time.

Maybe. It was difficult to tell anything from Saturday night’s fight except that he learned a lot from his old promoter, Bob Arum, who put De La Hoya in the ring with a bunch of has-beens and never-wases until they had no choice except to start looking for somebody who had a chance against him.

All that career plan did for De La Hoya besides keep him undefeated for seven years and win him five world titles was earn him about $120 million. So, naturally, De La Hoya sued to escape his contract with Arum.

Now De La Hoya also wants the gold medal from the 1992 Summer Olympics that he gave Arum as a birthday present in a show of appreciation.

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Forget the gold medal.

What De La Hoya really needs back is Arum, who, no matter what Don King says about him, is one of the two capable promoters in the sport. He knows that the only story line in boxing that works as well as an undefeated fighter is one like Muhammad Ali or Sugar Ray Leonard who has been beaten and is seeking redemption.

De La Hoya can only achieve that by fighting Trinidad or Mosley or both, and, if neither is available for whatever reason, then Fernando Vargas, who hasn’t beaten De La Hoya but would be an almost equally worthy foe. De La Hoya can’t achieve it against Gatti or his next opponent, Spain’s Javier Castillejo.

Perenchio, whose promotions from a couple of decades or so ago are legendary, no doubt knows that. But, when it comes to making the matches in the 21st Century that De La Hoya needs, I’d feel a lot more confident about Arum making them happen. If Arum were still promoting a willingDe La Hoya, at least one of them, against Mosley, probably already would have been made.

Now Mosley’s people are saying that, as much as they might like a rematch with De La Hoya for the money that it would earn them, they don’t really need it. If they’re right, then I’m not sure any of the sport’s heavy hitters need De La Hoya any more.

I hope I’m wrong, that for the sake of the sport and De La Hoya’s legacy, Perenchio proves as capable a matchmaker as Arum, that by the end of this year we’ll be talking about De La Hoya vs. Mosley or Trinidad or Vargas.

If not, there’s always Shakira.

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