Boxing’s Savior May Have Arrived In Nevada Desert

He has a smile bright as sunrise and fists of rolling thunder.

He can make the big boys cry and the little girls sigh.

He is properly humble and respectful. No foul words tumble from his lips. He can bring a rhino to its knees with one punch.

Oscar De La Hoya will do for boxing what Muhammad Ali did, what Sugar Ray Leonard did, what Mike Tyson did … well, before incarceration.

He will bring a measure of respectability, if not accountability, to blood sport. He will make you care. Golden Boy will win you. Even if you abhor the brutal craft he practices, you will be smitten by him. For a time, he will make it easier for us to forget what a cesspool the fight game really is.

“He wants to be bigger than the sport, and now I think he can,” Leonard said. “He’ll be a crossover draw. People who aren’t boxing fans will like him.”

Leonard’s benediction seemed to serve as the official anointing. Boxing’s bloody ritual - confirming the line of succession - was accomplished Friday night in the arena behind Caesars Palace, where, at ringside, it was merely 105 degrees.

De La Hoya did the hardest thing there is to do in sports - win when you are expected to, against an opponent old but cagey, fueled by warrior pride, and still dangerous.

It took De La Hoya 11 minutes and 37 seconds to disassemble the mighty Julio Cesar Chavez. De La Hoya left Chavez standing, but in a terrible way, his face and torso streaked with blood, a deep and unstaunchable gash above his left eye, his nose busted, bewilderment and confusion and despair in his eyes.

No one escapes in this sport. They all come, inevitably, to a night like this. They look across the ring and they see themselves - the way they were in their youth. Some of them accept what comes, and some of them try to deny it. Chavez did the latter. You knew he would rage and resist. He cannot go out like this, he said. He talked of revenge. Then he was led away for stitching.

What De La Hoya did was so much more than beat a man who was in the 100th professional fight of his 16-year career. He overcame the pressure, the moment, the circumstances. Oh, he knew what he could do. But when the moment came, could he do it?

This is what boxing asks of a man. What will you do when you are in great pain? What will you do when you are so tired you cannot go on? It strips you to your soul.

“You don’t know until it happens,” De La Hoya acknowledged. “I mean, you think you know what is required. You think you have inside what it takes. But you haven’t gone through it, so you don’t know for certain.”

Not many athletes will make such an admission out loud. That is one of the engaging things about De La Hoya. He is introspective and he is, in a sport of machismo, oddly sensitive and aware.

De La Hoya’s rite of passage was an especially arduous one. His moment in time was against not just a revered warrior, one who had ruled over the little men of fighting for a decade and a half, but an icon.

As Don King had frequently said of Chavez: “Most fighters bring a neighborhood following. Julio brings a whole country.”

De La Hoya will convert them eventually. It will take time, but one of these nights, when he finds someone to dance with to the edge of death, they will give him the tail and both ears.

“I know what they want,” he said. “They want me to be the typical Mexican fighter, and bleed and die in the ring. But I want to be smart. I will show them I have heart.”

He fought a fight wise beyond his 23 years. The wily Chavez felt the young bull’s power early and switched tactics. Normally, Chavez will come slowly ahead, find the range, and then lash the body. The beatings are always fearful and men are left broken.

But you could see Chavez blink in pain and surprise the first time De La Hoya hit him, and Chavez began to retreat. He tried to lure De La Hoya into chasing him so he could trap him against the ropes. But De La Hoya was remarkably composed and bloodlessly methodical. He raked Chavez with both hands, head and torso.

The fight was not a minute old when blood was spurting from just above the left eyebrow of Chavez. The old lion claimed that he had been nicked there five days before, during sparring, but this sounded lame. Besides, Chavez has seemed to have the hide of an armadillo throughout his career. His face would frustrate the best efforts of a Swiss army knife.

No, De La Hoya’s fists did this carving. A right hand tore the skin and then a double jab, heavy as a piano dropped from the fifth floor, busted open the wound. But De La Hoya resisted the impulse to rush in. He fought a smart, restrained fight. It became an execution.

The transfer of office may have taken place, but De La Hoya still has stations of the cross to confront. The new lion king is undefeated, but Chavez is his first victim of marquee value. And it must be noted that Chavez was already on the shady side of the mountain before this fight.

No, the proving of Oscar De La Hoya is a long way from over. He must fight big names. He must survive terrible duress - a knockdown, a horrible cut. He must fight often and long and well.

He will - of that all of us who are prisoners of this awful sport believe with all our misguided hearts.

Then, one inevitable night somewhere down the road, his reward will be to look across the ring and see himself - the way he looked on this hot night in the desert.