Vargas Tries to Bury His Past in Comeback Fight

Mexican ballads filled with heartbreak and hope echo softly off the walls as Fernando Vargas sits comfortably on a stool, allowing his longtime trainer and surrogate father, Eduardo Garcia, to carefully wrap his hands with meticulously manicured strips of tape.

The music, soft and soothing, seems out of place in a room known as “The Dungeon.” So does the detailed mural of an ancient Aztec scene that occupies one wall of the gym, the centerpiece of Vargas’ expansive compound in this mountain resort.

But Vargas, 25, a two-time junior middleweight world champion, has always been a walking contradiction, charming one minute, churlish and uncouth the next.

And although it’s in his blood to be an Aztec warrior, he’ll tell you, things are different this time around, even as the metamorphosis begins when he steps into the ring for his daily workout, the peaceful look on Vargas’ face replaced with his familiar smirk. On cue, the tunes switch from south-of-the-border ballads to angst-ridden inner-city rap, 2Pac telling tales of the realest [stuff] he’s ever wrote, against all odds. DMX extolling the virtues of a hard-knock life while reminding anyone listening that it’s the same old [stuff], dog, just another day ... here we go again.

Here we go again, indeed.

Having served his nine-month suspension for testing positive for steroids, Vargas (22-2, 20 knockouts) will fight Saturday for the first time since his 11th-round technical knockout loss to bitter rival Oscar De La Hoya last Sept. 14.

And although light-hitting and custom-made Fitz Vanderpool (24-4-4, 13 KOs), the World Boxing Council’s No. 1-ranked 154-pound contender, will be the one staring at him from across the ring at the sold-out 6,700-seat Grand Olympic Auditorium, Vargas’ bigger challenge will be trying to beat and bury his past while resurrecting his career and cleaning up his image in the first professional fight in Los Angeles for the Oxnard native.

Welcome to Part II of Vargas’ career ... and life, journeys that he insists with a straight face will be more humble, more real and more responsible.

“Those nine months really helped me clean my head and clean my team,” Vargas said. “I thank God that I tested positive for steroids because if I didn’t, I would have still had those people with me. And if you still have those people with you, the more you’re taking that stanozolol, the more it’s going to mess up your body.”

Vargas maintains that he never knowingly took the steroids, that he must have been slipped them in pill form alongside the vitamins and supplements he was ingesting during training for the De La Hoya fight.

“You’ve got to fall and stumble,” Vargas said, “to learn from your mistakes.”

Enter the Venice-based Pro Camp -- which serves to keep athletes in shape in their off-seasons -- and a new trainer in former welterweight champ Buddy McGirt.

Pro Camp trainer Frankie Cassavetes said that although Vargas looked to be in the best shape of his life before the De La Hoya fight, he was in fact in physical trouble because the steroid had “shut his natural receptors off to metabolize the body ... and when he got off the steroid he couldn’t metabolize the food, so he went up to 195 pounds. And after getting the blood work back you find out the kid was anemic.

“That’s not me talking, that’s the paperwork and the logistics that show you what happened to him. I mean, he fought that whole [De La Hoya] fight on [guts] and heart.”

Said Vargas of Pro Camp: “They fixed my body up.”

So although Vargas may no longer boast the ripped abs of an underwear model, he does plan on putting on a show for HBO’s “Boxing After Dark” viewers.

That’s where McGirt steps in.

Officially, Vargas’ longtime mentor Garcia is the head trainer. But even Vargas acknowledged that he has learned all he can from him, that he needed some new blood and a fresh outlook.

Garcia’s approval of McGirt joining Team Vargas, though, was crucial.

“I’m very pleased with the work we’ve done together with the new trainer -- Buddy,” Garcia said in Spanish. “He’s a good guy and he knows a lot. He made a few changes and I think we’ll have great results.”

Among the switches: emphasizing the left jab while defending against overhand rights and left hooks, the punches Vargas had become most susceptible to while being knocked out in two of his last four fights -- against De La Hoya and Felix Trinidad.

“He’s made great progress,” said McGirt, who joined the Vargas camp after training Arturo Gatti for his early June fight against Mickey Ward. “There’s some times when he gets caught up and he wants to [knock] these guys out ... to prove that he’s a tough guy. But we know that so there’s no need for that. We’re not here for that, so we just have to remind him to stay focused.”

Tasting success is why he started tasting the canvas with so much frequency, McGirt said.

“He started knocking people out,” he said. “He was stronger than everybody. You have a tendency at times, when you start knocking out people and you’re bullying them, you have a tendency to get away from things that got you there.”

With McGirt’s influence, Vargas said he may unveil a new “shake and bake” style against Vanderpool.

That, however, is not the most surprising change the stained-but-still-popular Vargas will reveal.

Vargas, who spent the first part of his career reveling in a Thug Life image (he was once involved in the beating of a man and had to wear an electronic ankle monitor as part of his 90-day sentence), desires to branch out and convert the cynical. He wants to join hip-hop clothiers P. Diddy (Sean John) and Russell Simmons (Phat Farm) with his own clothing line. “Nawshis,” as in nauseous, as in “My clothing line is sick,” is in development.

Vargas has also bought 50 apartment buildings in Bakersfield and has acquired a Dish Network distributorship in Ventura County while tapping into the Southland’s burgeoning Latino market with sponsorships from Chrysler and Allstate insurance.

Plus, he wants to act when his boxing career is finished.

“My portfolio’s diversified,” he said.

El Feroz, the Ferocious One, the Oxnard Thug Angel who once scared corporate America so much, has gone corporate himself?

“I’m corporate now, believe it,” he said. “I don’t think about isolating myself to just being a fighter. Look at Arnold Schwarzenegger. He was a damn bodybuilder and look at where he is today.”

Fine-tuning his image, no doubt.