Glitter Falls Off if You Are Hit

There have been three “Golden Boys” in the history of boxing. For each, the designation has not been without its tinge of irony.

The original Golden Boy was fictional, a character in a Clifford Odets play, a promising violinist who had to turn to pugilism to make a living in the Great Depression. It was a typical tale of the day of a pug exploited by the mob, betrayed by a woman and destroyed by the system. William Holden got the part in the movies.

The first real-life Golden Boy was Art Aragon. A handsome, jaunty, wise-cracking product of the postwar era, Aragon took his profession about as seriously as he took his other relationships in life, which is to say not at all.

Art was a good fighter, but he was at pains not to let you know that. He’d rather get a laugh than a title and spent most of his time outside the ring knocking his profession, his handlers, hangers-on and himself. When he fought Carmen Basilio he liked to say Basilio would go in the ring scared to death.

“He’s scared he might kill me,” Aragon would announce.

Now, there’s a Golden Boy in the ‘90s. Oscar De La Hoya is a gladiator of the old school. He takes his nickname and his profession seriously. He wants to be the best there is in his cruel trade. He is his own manager and is as far away from the image of a mob fighter as it’s possible to get. If he got in the ring with Carmen Basilio, he would expect Basilio to be scared--period.

Funny, because Oscar De La Hoya doesn’t look anything like a fighter. Or act like one. His skin is clear, his nose is straight, his eyes solemn and uncut. His brows have no scar tissue and neither of his ears looks as if he picked it up in the vegetable bin of the supermarket. Tom Cruise could play this part.

He has the looks of an altar boy, he speaks as softly as a priest in confession and he never talks trash or demeans his opponent. When he fought Julio Cesar Chavez, he said before the fight, “It will be an honor to be in the same ring with him.”

That didn’t stop him from battering Chavez and was scant consolation for Chavez when they picked him up off the ropes with a cut eye and broken nose four rounds later. It was like being bitten by your own poodle.

Fighters of Mexican heritage are known for two things: their utter fearlessness--they would fight a leopard for three days and never take a backward step--and their total lack of interest in the art of defense. They answer to nicknames like “Macho.”

Not De La Hoya. Oscar subscribes to the Gen. Patton theory--don’t die gallantly for your country, let some other poor SOB die for his. Oscar is a hard puncher, but he doesn’t throw caution to the wind to land one.

It is a strategy that has stood him in good stead. Oscar is 22-0 in the ring--only two of those fights went the limit. Oscar was the only American boxer to win a gold medal at the Barcelona Olympics. He won his first title--junior lightweight--in only his 11th pro fight. He unified the lightweight division in his 18th.

You would think De La Hoya would be carried back to the barrios of Los Angeles on the shoulders of his ecstatic neighbors, a hero among heroes. Instead, he was almost snubbed. When he fought local favorite Genaro Hernandez, the neighborhoods openly rooted for Hernandez. De La Hoya broke his nose in 22 places and stopped him in six rounds.

You would have thought he robbed a poor box. In East L.A., they were not awed, they were resentful. When he knocked out Chavez, it didn’t help. De La Hoya became a hero in Mexico but not with his own countrymen.

“They like to see their fighters bleed,” he explains tolerantly. “They like to see their fighters get up. I don’t like to bleed. And I don’t like to get knocked down.”

To give you an idea, his boxing idol is Willie Pep. Now, Pep was one of the great defenders of all time. He could go through 10 fights without getting hit.

De La Hoya was your typical gym fighter when he started out. Take-two-to-get-one. Then, he came under the tutelage of Jesus “The Professor” Rivero.

“Before him, I was a target,” De La Hoya says. “Typical. I got my knockouts, but I wasn’t careful. I am now. In the first couple of rounds of my fights, I work on nothing but defense.”

For years, it used to be the edge Eastern fighters had. The gyms back there were crowded with the crafty, experienced old handlers who came up in the days when the science of the game was taught: slipping punches, jabbing, holding, waiting for an opening, not making the fight like a cop raiding a crack house.

Rivero held up Willie Pep as a model, not “One Round” Rogales. It was not unmanly to duck. The other fighter he wanted Oscar to copy was one--Jose Napoles--whose nickname was “Mantequilla”--butter, not bomber.

When Oscar went to New York and fought in the storied Garden, the Latino community went wild over him.

“They know their boxing there and appreciate a fight doesn’t have to be a world war,” he says.

He still knocked out Jesse James Leija in two.

Oscar hopes to move into the “best pound-for-pound” category, a classification invented for Sugar Ray Robinson. He fights an undefeated Miguel Angel Gonzalez in Las Vegas at the Thomas & Mack Arena on Saturday.

He hopes the guys in the ‘hood won’t hold it against him if he outboxes Gonzalez before he knocks him kicking too. It’s hard to be golden when your nose is red and your eyes purple.