Boxer Cris Arreola has full plate

Cris Arreola, the heavyweight boxer, was coming to lunch at The Times recently and the editors were concerned.

Had they ordered enough food? Would he eat four sandwiches and two sportswriters?

No worries. This was the new, slimmed-down-to-fight-this-time-he-says Arreola. Plus, his wife, Erin, was along. She has a glare that translates to “one more potato chip and you’re on the couch for a week.”

Arreola knew better. His next heavyweight fight is this Saturday at the Citizens Business Bank Arena in Ontario. His opponent, Tomasz Adamek of Poland, has spent most of his career as a light-heavyweight and cruiserweight, so Arreola knows there may be lots of chasing and the need for fitness.

Fitness hasn’t always been Arreola’s strong suit. OK, how about never. You watch him come into the ring and you wonder how McDonald’s missed this sponsorship opportunity. There was a time when the Pillsbury Doughboy was more sculpted.

“I’ll be 239 fight night,” he said. “I’m walking around right now at 253.”

He said it with the pride of a man who sees no problem dropping 14 pounds in 14 days.

That’s typical Arreola. He is as candid and charming up close as he is feared from afar.

Mothers walking through the room and seeing him on TV, coming into the ring, will grab their children and lock the doors. First impressions are that you wouldn’t want to run into this guy in a dark alley, nor a fully lighted one. But he is a walking contradiction. He has a body full of tattoos, which can be menacing. One of them celebrates his friendship with a man who died in his arms after being hit with a stray bullet at a party. That’s not menacing, just nice.

In a world of sports that is almost always calculated for the benefit of media, Arreola is as unrehearsed as a sneeze. That got him in trouble after his only defeat, his one title shot to date, in September at Staples Center against champion Vitali Klitschko. Klitschko won in dominant fashion — two judges gave Arreola a round each and the third gave him none — and Arreola was still sobbing in the ring when the inevitable TV interview descended on him.

“Put a microphone in my face,” Arreola recalled, “and whatever comes out, comes out.”

Well, what came out was the F-word. Several times.

It wasn’t pretty, even though many of the shocked viewers probably watched later shows on the same HBO channel that had similar language and bodies lacking clothing. Still, the ring interview was so typically Arreola.

His promoter, Dan Goossen, said, “I won’t ever say to Cris, be somebody else.”

The World Boxing Council, which sanctioned the fight, said exactly that. They suspended him for six months. Which meant nothing. Arreola fought three months later on the undercard of a Paul Williams fight in Atlantic City and beat Brian Minto. No sanction asked, none given, few cared.

To some, Arreola’s extreme candor can be off-putting. To others, it is a hoot.

He says his earliest boxing memory “is chasing some kid around the ring and making him cry.” He settled on the nickname “the Nightmare” after kicking around “Big Nose” and “Pinocchio.” He used to advertise a bail bonds phone number on his boxing trunks.

He says others of Mexican heritage, like him, never really connected to Oscar De La Hoya during his years in the ring because De La Hoya didn’t speak Spanish like a Mexican.

“It was like he learned it in school,” Arreola said. “There was no feeling there, no real accent.”

He recently called Adamek a “medicated fighter” and then had to backtrack by saying he hadn’t meant that the medication wasn’t legal and available over the counter. He said that every time there is discussion about a fight with David Haye, now the No. 3-ranked heavyweight behind No. 1 Wladimir Klitschko and No. 2 Vitali, it gets stalled “because Haye comes down with a yeast infection.”

Crude comedy is Arreola’s way. So are huge, mind-numbing punches.

Saturday’s battle with Adamek will be watched closely by Wladimir Klitschko, who said, “I was in my brother’s corner when he beat Arreola at Staples. I can see Arreola has potential. Also, that he’s rough around the edges. I’ll be watching Adamek-Arreola and the winner will be deserving of a shot at my belts.”

So, coming up in Ontario for Arreola, there is much to fight for, and much to talk about.

He will be fine. He has a week to chew on it.

bill.dwyre@latimes.com