A Classic Boxer Versus Puncher

When last seen in the ring, Ricardo Mayorga was puffing on a cigarette and gleefully inhaling the heady air at the peak of his career.

Vernon Forrest, his opponent on that Jan. 25 night in Temecula, was wandering around the ring, stunned after suffering a third-round knockout at hands of a 6-1 underdog, trying to fathom how he had dropped so unexpectedly and so dramatically to the low point of his career.

Nearly six months later, as the fighters prepare to meet in tonight’s rematch at the Orleans, little has changed.

Mayorga (24-3-1, one no-contest, 22 knockouts) is still flying high, still celebrating, still talking about the victory that enabled him to add Forrest’s World Boxing Council welterweight title to his World Boxing Assn. crown.

He stepped on the scale at Friday’s weigh-in having exchanged his cigarette for a chicken wing, which he munched on while taunting Forrest. He weighed 146, including the chicken wing.

Forrest (35-1, 26), who weighed 147, is quietly searching for redemption, choosing not to talk to the media in the days leading to this fight with the exception of an interview with the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, his hometown paper, choosing to otherwise not take part in the promotion.

Even the most reticent of fighters get involved in the pre-fight news conference, knowing it’s the last prime opportunity for their promoter to sell tickets. But despite the urging of promoter Don King, who can certainly urge with the best of them, Forrest wouldn’t even fully honor that obligation, making only a brief statement from the dais Thursday.

“I’d like to apologize to Don King and the media for not being accessible,” Forrest said. “This fight is very important to my career. I wanted complete concentration and focus.”

With that, he was gone, not even waiting to hear Mayorga speak.

That part is understandable. Mayorga, who can trash talk with the best of them, has been as merciless with the words he has directed at Forrest in the last six months as he was with his fists in their first meeting.

“Vernon Forrest is scared,” Mayorga said. “He has people talking for him.... When someone is scared to fight, they are even scared to talk to the reporters.

“I am upset because [Forrest] did not call me for Father’s Day. I am going to give him a whipping because I did not get my present.”

Mayorga knocked down Forrest in the first round of their January bout. That seemed to anger Forrest, who then abandoned his strategy of outboxing Mayorga to trade punches with the wildly swinging Nicaraguan.

Bad idea.

Forrest was so heavily favored entering that fight because he was considered the superior boxer and was coming off back-to-back victories over Shane Mosley, who had been labeled one of the best pound-for-pound fighters in the world until he ran into Forrest.

Mayorga was coming off two matches against Andrew “Six Heads” Lewis.

The first was ruled no contest because of an accidental head butt suffered by Lewis. The second fight also proved to be no contest, but for a different reason. It was stopped in the fifth round when Lewis was unable to continue because of a devastating knockdown by Mayorga.

Nobody questions Mayorga’s punching power. He’s a home-run hitter who swings from the heels on every punch. But just as you don’t give home-run hitters pitches down the middle, you don’t stand in front of big swingers such as Mayorga and give him a target.

Forrest seemed to forget that fundamental fact after Mayorga put him down in the first round. In the third, Mayorga connected solidly with a right hand, sending Forrest reeling into the ropes.

Those ropes saved Forrest from going down, and referee Marty Denkin may have saved him from more serious damage by ruling the fight over at that point, 2:06 into the round.

The betting public, sensing that Forrest will be smarter this time, have made him a 2-1 favorite.

“It does not bother me that I am not the favorite,” Mayorga said.

“I respect their opinion, but I have to laugh at the oddsmakers who think the last fight with Forrest was a fluke.”

Mayorga is predicting a second-round knockout.

In other words, he plans to come out smoking in the first round, and be smoking again after the second.

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In the semi-main event, World Boxing Organization junior- welterweight champion DeMarcus Corley (28-1-1, 16) will defend against Zab Judah (28-1, one no-contest, 21).

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Staples Center President Tim Leiweke said he hoped to land the Lennox Lewis-Vitali Klitschko rematch, tentatively scheduled for Dec. 6. If not, Leiweke said he would like to stage a Klitschko doubleheader next year, featuring Vitali and his brother Wladimir, both L.A. residents, against opponents to be determined.