They’re Ready to Rumble and Roar

One of Fernando Vargas’ managers stared into the sweating, howling crowd and sneered, “I invite you to watch Oscar De La Hoya enter the caves of hell and dance with the devil!”

In the past, this town’s gold-plated boxer would have shrugged off such muttering as hype.

But on a curious Wednesday, De La Hoya embraced it as understatement.

In the bowels of the stately Biltmore, in the first round of the De La Hoya-Vargas promotion, mayhem assaulted reason, impulse overruled intelligence, and De La Hoya knocked out a game plan.

For the next four months, the seemingly dignified fighter will crawl through those caves, dancing that dance.

“This is bad blood,” he said. “This is for reals.”

This is also the apparent cost of resurrecting a boxing career, De La Hoya’s larger goal when he fights Vargas May 4 in Las Vegas in the juiciest all-L.A. boxing match in years.

Hoping to regain his position atop the boxing world, despite nearly a year’s inactivity, De La Hoya has chosen to begin his climb from those unfamiliar surroundings known as the mud.

For the first time in memory, De La Hoya acknowledged he dislikes an opponent.

“I hate Vargas,” he said. “I really hate him.”

For the first time, he attacked an opponent’s machismo.

“Vargas is obsessed with me, he’s in love with me, he’s like a celebrity stalker,” he said.

For the first time, he talked about ponderings that did not involve music or riches.

“I really have been having sweet dreams about seeing Vargas on the canvas, just laying there, his little hairs sticking up,” he said.

After this strange interview, De La Hoya was then dragged into the alley by his words, Vargas shoving him in the chest when the boxers met for the traditional opening chin-to-chin photograph.

Another Oscar first.

“Look, he’s crying, he’s crying!” shouted Vargas later.

“Is that the best you can do?” shouted De La Hoya. “Look, he didn’t even tear my tie!”

Perhaps not surprisingly, this was not the first time Vargas has popped somebody like that. But this was the first time he has done so while wearing an electronic anklet monitored by Santa Barbara law enforcement officials while he serves a 90-day home sentence for assault.

If Santa Barbara wants to let its bad guys roam the streets, that’s Santa Barbara’s business. But shouldn’t that monitoring thing have been put around, I don’t know, his fists?

“If he swings at me,” De La Hoya had said, “all I have to do is call his probation officer.”

By now, that probably won’t be necessary.

But be prepared for that sort of promotion, that sort of fight.

Soon after their altercation Wednesday, fans in one side of the room began chanting, in Spanish, that De La Hoya was a sissy.

Then Vargas imitated De La Hoya in feminine intonations.

De La Hoya countered with his own chant about Vargas’ apparent glass jaw.

“I know where to hit him,” he said in a sing-song voice. “ I know where to hit him.”

It’s all very silly. It’s not very Golden.

But it’s all quite serious.

De La Hoya, having suffered his only two losses in his last five fights, desperately needs to flick aside the pesky Vargas before rebuilding a boxing career that recently has sat virtually dormant.

How can he regain the respect of the boxing world if he first can’t conquer his own neighborhood?

Vargas, meanwhile, needs De La Hoya in precisely the same manner.

He wants to become a popular champion again, one year after his only loss.

But every road there leads through De La Hoya.

Many wonder if De La Hoya has lost his fire. The same people wonder if Vargas, since being pounded a year ago by Felix Trinidad, has lost his head.

Each boxer is like a flailing swimmer. Each boxer considers his opponent a handy life preserver.

Desperate men, four desperate months.

Even the hyperbolic promoters are closing in on the truth.

“This will be a fight for the streets,” said Gary Shaw, Vargas’ promoter. “This is for the championship of the streets.”

In a rivalry that began with words from the streets.

Since enduring a perceived snub as an amateur, Vargas has spent much of his career claiming that De La Hoya was a chicken.

He claims De La Hoya ran from Trinidad, ran from Sugar Shane Mosley, and will run again.

De La Hoya wants terribly, finally, to disagree with him.

“I want to become the great person that I lost,” he said.

Vargas also claims De La Hoya is not a real Mexican American, whatever that means.

He claims De La Hoya has grown too rich and snobbish for his East L.A. roots, whereas Vargas maintains close ties to his friends in Oxnard.

De La Hoya wants to become the sort of resilient boxer who can win back those fans.

Said De La Hoya, “It’s not gonna be close.”

Said Vargas, “We’re gonna get down.”

They’re already there.

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Bill Plaschke can be reached at bill.plaschke@latimes.com.