Golden Idea’s a Hard Sell

It’s the Sunday before the start of the NCAA basketball tournament and the pairings are set. But UCLA announces it won’t participate unless it is put in the West Regional. Duke announces it won’t play in the same bracket as North Carolina. And North Carolina announces it doesn’t even recognize the NCAA’s authority.

Now that would be March madness.

And that seems to be the type of madness surrounding a tournament of a very different sort, the Oscar De La Hoya 154-pound event.

Fernando Vargas wants no part of it. De La Hoya’s promoter, Bob Arum, wants no part of Winky Wright. Shane Mosley loves the tournament as long as he gets to fight De La Hoya first. Vernon Forrest, happy anybody wants him, loves the idea so much he is negotiating to make De La Hoya his promoter.

Reestablishing himself as the king of the nonheavyweights with his victory in September over Vargas, on top of two losses by Mosley and the retirement of Felix Trinidad, De La Hoya is trying to use his power to provide for his immediate and long-term future. He wants to finish his career with a few lucrative fights while building up his promotional organization, Golden Boy Promotions, as a source of income and influence in his post-fight years.

Toward that end, De La Hoya has proposed a three-fight, 12- to 18-month event that would ideally pit him against Mosley and Vargas against Forrest in first-round matches with a championship fight between the winners.

But it doesn’t appear the event will become reality because boxing just isn’t that simple. You tell North Carolina it’s going to play Duke and that’s the end of it. In boxing, it never seems to end. There are promoters and television networks and sanctioning organizations and they all have contracts to enforce and territories to protect.

In this case:

* Vargas’ promoter, Kathy Duva of Main Events, balks at De La Hoya’s stipulation that Golden Boy promote any tournament fights he is not in. In De La Hoya’s fights, Golden Boy will co-promote with Arum. Duva refuses to relinquish her promotional rights.

“It will never happen,” Duva said. “Oscar can say anything he likes. He has his agenda and I have mine.”

* Mosley’s promoter, Barry Frank, is discussing with Arum a September De La Hoya-Mosley match. Mosley is first expected to fight Raul Marquez Feb. 8.

* Wright, the International Boxing Federation 154-pound champion, would love to get in with the big boys, but Arum is balking. “What if Winky were to qualify to fight Oscar? How could I sell that?”

* Forrest is talking with Golden Boy officials about joining their stable. Although he beat Mosley twice, Forrest doesn’t have the name recognition to get big fights.

What Was He Thinking?

With Vargas facing the Nevada State Athletic Commission on Wednesday after testing positive for steroids, his co-manager, Shelly Finkel, was hoping for leniency.

So why would Finkel bring in another of his fighters, Mike Tyson, to sit beside his friend Vargas at the hearing? Doesn’t Finkel remember the stormy hearings and bad feelings between Tyson and the commission? Did he really think a reminder would put them in a charitable mood?

That is tantamount to Michael Jordan coming before NBA Commissioner David Stern on gambling allegations and bringing Pete Rose along as a character witness.

Winner by the Numbers

Erik Morales and Marco Antonio Barrera have fought two memorable battles, each winning one. But in terms of appeal, Barrera is clearly the winner. His fight against Johnny Tapia this month, a nontitle fight, got an 8.1 rating on HBO, roughly the same as the two Mosley-Forrest fights. Last week’s Morales-Paulie Ayala title fight drew 125,000 pay-per-view buys, less than half the 280,000 for Barrera-Morales II.

Quick Jabs

Micky Ward (37-11, 27 knockouts) and Arturo Gatti (34-6, 28) will stage a rematch of their memorable slugfest of May tonight (HBO, 6:45) in Atlantic City, N.J.... Lightweights Julio Diaz (25-2, 18) and Felix St. Kitts (12-2-2, 7) will face off in the 10-round main event tonight at the Arrowhead Pond (Channel 9, 8). The semi-main event will match super flyweights Martin Castillo (21-1-1, 13) and Keyri Wong (9-3-1, 9), also a 10-rounder.... Tickets are on sale for the return of boxing to Olympic Auditorium on Jan. 18.