One thing has become clear: If Jos? Antonio Rivera really wants Oscar, he’s going have to put on an Oscar-winning performance.
That means a real acting job. Stanislavsky stuff.
Rivera, charming and polite in real life, has to go into a telephone booth (if he can find one these days) and emerge as a rude, crude, uncouth, foul-mouthed, vulgar, boorish sociopath — just look in the dictionary under Ricardo Mayorga — and someone that Oscar De Loya must immediately remove from the face of the planet for the good of all boxing before he rides off into the sunset in tranquil Pasadena, Calif., to try and count his countless millions.
Guess what? Even that might not do it — although it might earn Rivera a job in movies someday.
The Golden Boy, during an interview last week with espn.com’s Dan Raphael, reiterated what he’s been saying all along — that it’s either Floyd Mayweather Jr. on Sept. 16 in Las Vegas, or retirement.
“If I do fight again,” De La Hoya said, “it would be Floyd Mayweather Jr. It’s down to him. … I think he is the best fighter out there right now, pound for pound. And if I do decide to fight again, it would be against the best. I think that would motivate me.”
Yet De La Hoya said a lot of other things that seemed to leave at least a microscopic opening for Rivera or someone else to squeeze through. That, of course, is assuming a Mayweather-De La Hoya fight can’t be arranged, and heaven knows there are millions of stumbling blocks to that fight — all of them with dollar signs.
Oscar himself admitted that he’s never been more motivated than he was to silence the loud-mouthed Mayorga, whose shameless insults and attacks on everything from De La Hoya’s wife and family to his manhood and Mexican heritage finally got the Golden Boy in the ring for their May 6 mega-fight. It produced 850,000 pay-per-view buys — second only to the De La Hoya-Bernard Hopkins fight 20 months earlier that shattered all previous non-heavyweight records — but somehow didn’t leave De La Hoya satisfied enough to say the “R” word.
“I put everything into (that training camp),” De La Hoya told espn.com. “I said, the hell with the pains, the hell with this, the hell with that. I put everything into it. I am sure it will be impossible to be in the shape I was in, the focus I was in, the state of mind. I was in such a zone.”
That’s Oscar’s dilemma — to find a fight that (a) is against the best out there, and (b) will motivate him like the Mayorga fight. Unfortunately, there isn’t a single human being on the planet who fills both bills.
And since the Mayweather fight is fraught with pitfalls, like Oscar’s trainer doubling as his opponent’s father, and numbers that apparently are making everyone too greedy to compromise, the 33-year-old De La Hoya would seem headed for retirement.
But he can’t do it. That’s clear after this latest interview, in which he said he feels “pressured” to come up with answer on his future, but can’t.
“It’s crunch time, it really is,” he said five days ago, “so I have to make a decision in a few days.”
The MGM Grand in Las Vegas and the Sept. 16 HBO pay-per-view date have been reserved for this mega-fight for some time. But now Floyd Mayweather Sr., Oscar’s trainer, has demanded $2 million for his cut instead of the $250,000 he customarily receives. The fact that Floyd Sr. and Floyd Jr. have been estranged since 2000 only adds to the complications.
One report said that Floyd Sr.’s demand for $2 million was enough to kill the fight, which could top $60 million in pay-per-view fees alone. But Floyd Jr. reportedly isn’t helping matters with his own outrageous demands.
After all that garbage about love and family and concern for their own flesh blood, the Mayweathers have proved that, as usual, it’s all about the money.
Another report said that Floyd Jr., who last fought as a welterweight in whipping Zab Judah, is now looking at fighting super featherweight Manny Pacquiao at a middle ground of 135 pounds. That might be tough, though, since the Pac Man is already booked for a July 2 bout against Oscar Larios and a lucrative Nov. 18 rubber match against Erik Morales.
So that means, until De La Hoya announces he’s hanging them up, Rivera still has a shot, albeit a long one. His only hope is to get under the Golden Boy’s skin like Mayorga did, challenge him publicly, and don’t stop berating him until he agrees to fight him.
There are plenty of people who’d like to see Rivera create some unsightly gaps in that charming Golden Boy smile. He was coddled by HBO early in his pro career after winning gold at the 1992 Olympics in Barcelona and got some preferential scoring treatment, but there’s no questioning the Golden Boy’s 10 world titles in six different weight classes from 130 to 160 pounds.
That’s a range that would impress both Mariah Carey and Henry “Homicide Hank” Armstrong, a ring Hall of Famer whose titles in the 1930s and ’40s would have spanned five weight classes by today’s standards.
This won’t be easy for Rivera. It probably goes against every Christian ideal he stands for to insult a fellow human being. But, hey, if nudity is OK in acting, then antisocial behavior is barely a blip on the moral radar screen.
And if he’s successful, Rivera won’t have to worry about entertainment manager Ken Capurso chasing down bit parts for him in B movies. If he can fool De La Hoya into getting in the ring, it’s move over, Bobby DeNiro.
Why? Because Rivera has nothing to offer De La Hoya. His WBA title? Oscar has won 29 world titles if you count all his defenses. Money? De La Hoya has pocketed $250 million in purses alone, not counting endorsements, what his Golden Boy Enterprises conglomerate rakes in, and all those other lucrative little pies he has his fingers in.
Pride? That’s the button.
Rivera has to attack Oscar’s Mexican heritage, insult his wife and children, question his manhood — all of which Mayorga did, and quite brilliantly, too. It brought De La Hoya’s blood to such a boil that he trained like a madman and exploded in the ring.
Rivera must do the same thing. It may involve some crotch-grabbing and profanity, but Jos? has to remember that this is all in the name of theater — and a seven-figure payday.
Besides, Rivera’s heritage should make it easy for him to hate De La Hoya. When it comes to boxing, Puerto Ricans and Mexicans are practically natural enemies — like cats and dogs, beer and wine, Arum and King.
The problem is that the clock is ticking. With Rivera as his opponent instead of Mayweather, Oscar won’t have a $60 million extravaganza. But as he said last week, “The money is the wrong reason to fight.”
Rivera needs to give him that reason — and take advantage of De La Hoya’s conflicting emotions.
“Right now is a perfect opportunity for me to retire the way I have always envisioned, the way every fighter envisions,” De La Hoya said last week. “Right now is the perfect, perfect moment. But I have to be honest with you. I have gone back and forth at least 20 times, I really have.”
Rivera needs to keep that doubt alive.
Bud Barth can be reached by e-mail at [email protected].
