After his devastating loss to Oscar De La Hoya and his subsequent suspension for testing postive for steroids, Fernando Vargas has begun preparations for his comeback fight in July with daily workouts at the famed Gold's Gym in Venice, California.

Yeah, I know, that's dripping with irony isn't it? It's like Ray Lewis opening up his own limo service or O.J. Simpson getting an endorsement deal for Ginsu knives.

"Well, y'know what I'm saying, I know that I'm not taking nuthin'," Vargas told MaxBoxing, laughing loudly at the irony himself. "They can test me now and definitely see that I come up negative."

Vargas seems pretty upbeat considering it's just months after his dissapointing loss to his arch rival. He reflects on his September showdown by saying:

"I felt it was anybody's fight. The ninth and tenth rounds I won, but the tenth round ending the way it ended of course they're going to give it to him. But if you see the whole round, that's all my round.

"But there were tactical errors on my part. Which, y'know, I'd love a rematch. It was competitive fight all the way through and I feel the second time can be redemption for me. It's something I think about, so I'm here, I ain't going nowhere."

In another ironic twist, De La Hoya who in the past had balked at giving Vargas a huge payday, could now end up giving him two. As the first fight did over 900,000 pay-per-view buys and Shane Mosley seems to be hesitating on the terms of a proposed rematch with 'the Golden Boy' on September 13th. Bob Arum has given Mosley an ultimatum to finalize the deal for a De La Hoya rematch by February 8th. If Mosley doesn't, there is a chance that Vargas could get that slot.

"If it's necessary and possible, I would definitely do it and it's the best thing that could ever happen -- if it happens," Vargas said of the slight possibility he could get a rematch almost to the day of his first encounter with De La Hoya. "The first time around it was hard to get the fight and it was a competitive fight all the way through. So I'm still up in the air with it and I'm very excited at times but hopefully it does happen with two businessmen who really think and sit down and talk about it.

"Does it make sense for Shane Mosley-De La Hoya?" Vargas asked rhetorically. "I'd say definitely, no. Now, is he going to make money with Vernon Forrest-De La Hoya? I say absolutely not. Now, if he says Fernando Vargas-Oscar De La Hoya, then what? Of course."

Vargas and De La Hoya did actually meet to discuss a possible rematch a couple of months ago, but, Vargas wants to make it clear, it was nothing more than a business meeting. They weren't breaking bread together.

"Once and for the last time," says Vargas, clarifying what happened between him and De La Hoya, "We NEVER had dinner, we're never friends, he never got my phone number, I never got his, he's never going to come over to my crib for tamales for Christmas, I'm not going over to his -- if he cooks them or not.

"But let me tell you something, I went there as a businessman to try and get him back into the ring. Because I want to get in his ass -- bottom line. People can not comprehend that I could sit down with somebody I don't like -- and still don't like -- and say, 'Yo, let's talk business. You are going to make no money with no one but me. Me, I'm not going to make no money fighting no one but you. Regardless if we don't like each other, one thing we do is make money. So what? I'm not here to have dinner, I want nothing to drink. I just wanna talk for a second. What do you say?'"

Vargas says that De La Hoya basically agreed with his premise during their 30-minute get together. But realistically Arum's ultimatum is a high profile negotiating ploy and September 13th wouldn't fit into what Main Events has mapped out for Vargas anyway, who will most likely have two more fights in 2003 after his July comeback, which could take place at the Grand Olympic Auditorium.

So now he begins the long road back to rehabilitate himself physically, and maybe more importantly, pshycologically. Something he says, that was helped by the reaction of his loyal fans.

"They still showed me a lot of love, out of this world," said Vargas, of the feedback he's gotten since his loss to De La Hoya. "And I thank them for that. They come up to me and tell me, 'WE almost had him' and that's tight because they're not talking about, 'You almost had him' it's like, 'WE almost had him, WE almost had this cat' and a lot of love. It's never been anything negative, I'm surprised.

"But at the same time I'm not the cat you're going to come up to and just spit negative s__t to. I guess the fans that are cool with me they show me love and I appreciate them. I'm going to continue doing my thing. I'm 25 years of age and I know I got a lot to give boxing. My fans are everything to me. I see them and they're like, 'Don't even trip, dawg' and 'We got your back' that makes me feel good. Remember, real, recognizes real, always."

It was bad enough that Vargas would lose to De La Hoya, but when he tested positive for steroids afterwards, it was the classic case of adding insult to injury.

"That was a worse kick," said Vargas, who insists he inadvertantly took them. "It's like this, when people go 'Well, how are you not going to know that you were taking steroids?' and I hear people ask that. When they give you pills, you don't know. I mean you can take a bunch of vitamins and they come in that form and obviously I did not know that. So people didn't get the whole story. I would understand if they were injecting me with something, then I would feel the would say 'How could he not know?'"

It concluded a training camp that was fueled with turmoil as John Philbin, who had been Vargas' strength and conditioning coach for the past two years, and Mazzan Ali, a new nutritionist, brought in by Vargas about a month before the big fight, had clashed.

"There was too many egos," Vargas states. "The thing that got away from everything was trying to help me win a fight. And at the end of the day that's what it's all about. I ain't about, you, about John Philbin, Maz Ali or anybody else. It's about me winning this fight, getting ready. Not fighting like two wives, two girlfriends, I'm not trying to hear that."

So ultimately who does he blame for his predicament?

"Me," he answered. "No one else. Because I gotta be responsible for what I put in my mouth. I'm not going to be pointing fingers -- everytime you point the finger, there's three pointing back. Yes, I had people who I thought were competent professional people, obviously they were fighting like bitches amongst one another. That was something I tried to keep out of my head but it was going down. I don't blame nobody but myself. At the end of the day it was me who swallowed them."

PRO ATHLETE CAMP

There is a reason why Vargas makes the hour-long trek six days a week from his home in Camarillo, Calif. to Venice, it's because Pro Athlete Camp's offices and headquarters are located inside the Gold's Gym.

With large photos of Arnold Schwarzenneger and Lee Haney prominently hung and a roster full of celebs/athletes walking around, Vargas intently went through a rigourous two-hour workout. But it's a different type of regimen that he's doing for now. His workout was almost exclusively devoted to movements around the rotator cuff muscles and lower back.

Vargas would use nothing more than five pound weights and works repetitively for minutes at a time. Whether it was laying on his side, on his back or stomach, Vargas would work on different range of motions with his rotator cuff.

T.R. Goodman, who is Vargas' personal trainer, explains his companies basic foundation of their system.

"To give an athlete an idea of what's going on underneath their skin," he explains. "Once you know the things that are going on them you know what you can correct. And over the years of doing that, you start to see certain consistent patterns and what we're doing, instead of looking at the body like: triceps, biceps, chest or back. We try to look at the body from the internal body."

At this point, Goodman gets up and gets a skeletal model complete with muscles and joints and continues explaining:

"Your body has a lot of different layers to it. And where most of the injuries occur -- and occasionally you may hear of a guy tearing a bicep -- but most of the injuries don't come to the major muscle groups: shoulder, dislocation, shoulder seperatiion, lower back pains, all these kinds of things, but when you look at the body, this part of the rotator cuff (as he pointed to the area in the front shoulder) muscle group and this lies underneath the big area -- the front and middle deltoid -- this stuff lies underneath and you see it attaches to the skeletal system. This is where the cause of most of the injuries come from -- from here (as he pointed to the rotator cuff area).

Goodman would also point out the lower back area as a point of emphasis.

"In boxing or any rotational sport, some of the movements you saw Fernando doing today were designed to strengthen these little muscles that fit in between the spine or vetebral column. So we're trying to make all this internal stuff first and then we worry about the bicep, the chest, triceps and so on and so forth."

Before they work on adding walls or extra rooms, they are working on rebuilding the foundation of Vargas.

"Right now, we're just working his internal structure," Goodman said. "When you do repetitive activities over and over, certain muscles become dominant, other muscles completely shut off. And it's that wear and tear that starts to aler a person ability to perform.

"In Fernando's case, being able to avoid punches, slip punches and deliver them, from doing that so many years, he's gotten really constricted. So we're trying to open everything up again so that when he goes to throw punches or avoid punches, he has the ability to move more economically.

"If you look at some of the movements he was doing today, when he first started doing them, we didn't even use weights and we just used his own body. And he was sweating like crazy, part of the reason it's so difficult is that if you overdevelop the chest, like boxers who stand like this (as he mimicked a boxing stance) things get real short and all the movements today are designed to pull this back (as he pointed to the chest and shoulder areas) but if the nature of the muscle wants to always pull it forward, then we're trying to pull it back. His body is fighting itself. Now, he's body is starting to open up and we can start to use the weight to actually make him stronger."

A good analogy for 'opening up' would be like untying the knots and tightness in Vargas body or fixing the alignment on your car. Once they do this they go onto the next phase, which would consist of the more traditional resistence weight training.

"Yeah, we'll do the weights after," said Goodman, "but lets say for example that if we get him to start doing his chest right now, whats going to happen is the muscle is going to get tighter, it's going to pull forward and it's going to work counter-productive to the other things we're trying to do."

Goodman estimates that the next phase will begin sometime in mid-February. And with about seven months until Vargas steps in the ring again, Goodman is not concerned about Vargas weight -- which seemed to be hovering around the cruiserweight limit -- and beyond.

"No, not at all," said Goodman, "and the thing about his weight, it's no different than the women who do Slim-Fast or do these restricted calorie diets. What happens is, from the intense training, lack of food and everything, the subconscious, Fernando's, not even in complete control of that. The subconscious can take over and then when he doesn't have to train and he doesn't have to be restricted on what he's doing -- he just goes crazy. Because for so long it was deprived."

Goodman knows his history well, Vargas in his downtime has been known to blow up in weight, and admits that his discipline wanes significantly. His training camps have oftentimes been more about cutting weight than preparing for a fight strategically.

So now, Goodman and his company are trying to not only get Vargas in great physical condition, but to change his mindset and lifestyle.

"So the objective we have right now is to try and make the training fun again and he wants to run and I intentionally wont let him run for two reasons: one, the trauma from his body doing what he's done for years and years, the body's going to go back to it's old ways of trying to do things and I want to have more time to correct that.

"The second reason is because I don't want him to think in his mind that training and being in good condition, as a professional, there's a cycle. There's a fight, he has a certain process he has to go through for the fight, after the fight. There's another certain process that he can go through after the fight. So I don't want him to think that everytime he trains or has to be in good shape that it has to be this intense, stressful situation."

But Vargas has to be more disciplined in between bouts.

"There's no off-season for pro athletes anymore," Goodman points out. Which was proven that day as NFL veteran Roman Phifer, who just completed another season a month ago, was working out. Along with USC taiback Justin Fargas and some other college prospects who were preparing for the NFL combine and upcoming draft."

A boxers 'season' kind of really revolves around when he's going to fight so my objective for him is to already be in shape by the time he goes to boxing camp. A lot of boxers use camp to get in shape and then they try to work on their boxing skills at the same time. Which is why they end up so depleted, so burnt out, so worn out, they're careers are shorter.

"With this strategy were using now, he'll be in shape by the time he goes to camp. He'll get really fine-tuned for boxing. Immediately after the fight, he'll start working out again.

" But the work we're doing now is to get the trauma out of the body, re-strengthen the foundation and work our way out again."

As you walk around the Pro Athlete Camp offices it's hard not to notice the autographed jerseys of Willie McGinest (a starter on last years New England Patriots Super Bowl club) or Brian Kelly (who started at cornerback in this years Super Bowl for the Tampa Bay Bucs), who are both clients of PAC. The company began in 1992 and their first clients were volleyball diva Gabrielle Reese and hockey players Alan May and Chris Chelios. Among their clients are a wide array of athletes from the NHL, NFL, Major League Baseball and mixed martial arts. PAC not only has a staff of trainers, but a full-time nutritionist, soft-tissue therapist and personal assessments.

"This is all new stuff to me, I've never done this type of work," said Vargas, after his workout. "But we're working from the inside-out. This is something that I feel is going to be beneficial to me. I feel looser already. And I just look forward to being back, there's a lot of scientific stuff from these cats that have grabbed me and make me say to myself, 'Wow, I'm glad I made this decision to be here' I look forward to staying here as long as I can, I like waking up in the morning and getting up and doing something."

But Vargas is just recently converted.

"I tell you, I didn't even know what I was doing," he admitted. "I was kinda pissed off and like, 'What is this s__t? What am I doing? How is this gonna help me?' and then at the end of the day they started explaining it to me and I started learning the motions and at the end everything makes sense. I think this is going to make me a better all-around athlete."

BUDDY SYSTEM?

Vargas admitted that he will be bringing another trainer, not to replace Eduardo Garcia, but just another set of eyes to give more input.

He wouldn't give us a hint on who he was thinking off, but did say that they are reviewing all the usual suspects.

My guess would be is that they go with Buddy McGirt.

HE'S NOT REEEEEADY

The highlight of Vernon Forrest's weekend was his entrance, where he seeemed to be celebrating a victory that would never come against the hard-hitting Ricardo Mayorga.

After an eventful first two rounds, I mentioned to Doug Fischer that 'This is Junior Jones-Kennedy McKinney all over again' and wouldn't you know it, like 'Poison', he got stopped the very next frame. Like Jones, Forrest got out of his fight early trying to impress the fans and raise his profile. Instead, he shot his wad early and collapsed versus a dangerous puncher. And out the door went potential big fights, for Jones a bout against Naseem Hamed (who was the main event that night in his U.S. debut facing Kevin Kelley) and Forrest now thinks of just getting his title back -- somewhere Bob Arum and Oscar De La Hoya must be having a good chuckle.

I don't think there's any doubt that Mayorga's heat and passion made Forrest uncomfortable but I also think that Forrest wanted to shed his label as a boring technician -- and it cost him. He got out of his tempo -- it was like a football team who runs the wishbone offense trying to throw the ball 35 times -- and he found himself in an unfamiliar fight, which would mean, an exciting one, which was exactly what Forrest couldn't get into with Mayorga. If you're a boring fighter, you might as well be what you are.

Especially if you have a multi-fight deal with HBO in your back pocket. What's that old saying that trainers always say to their fighters "Hey, look good tomorrow, win tonight and keep that HBO contract intact' or something like that.

And that is what Forrest and his people tried to do beforehand with their matchmaking for this bout. Don't believe this rhetoric from them that they only wanted and yearned to take on the very best of opposition. I simply heard the names of Angel Hernandez, Hercules Kyvelos and Thomas Daamagard too much to believe that. Mayorga was never their first choice and for good reason.

Lou DiBella, former boxing czar at HBO, told me, 'I told them not to take a Mayorga' that may have been great advice, but HBO did the right thing on their end. They gave their viewers a compelling night that won't soon be forgotten. And those three names I mentioned along with a Javier Castillejo are names that I don't think DiBella himself would have accepted if he were still at HBO.

Good for HBO, they did the right thing and they were awarded with a memorable night.

KINGDOM

Larry Merchant tells me that there is a rematch clause where Mayorga can take an interim fight before facing Forrest again, which would probably be a good idea for both guys.

At the post-fight presser, King, if you read between the lines, seemed to make it very clear to Forrest: I control all three belts. If you join the King-dom, you'll be in the mix. Ooooooonly in America!!!! -- or something to that effect, as he also has both Michelle Piccirillo and Cory Spinks who fight for the IBF title soon.

It's always interesting to see the powers that be react when King comes up with an unexpected victory. It's like they've all seen ghosts or something.

As the Don would say "That's super, spectacular, sensational and scintillating, Ricardo Mayorga, the smokin' matador has proven once again in his own imitable, unimaginable and unbelievable style, that America, is the greatest country in the world. With his own elan, style and flair, he has lived up to the prophecy and the dream of this great land..."

FINAL FLURRIES

Don't be surprised to see Fres Oquendo take on Mo Harris on March 1st on the Roy Jones-John Ruiz undercard in Las Vegas... That was quite a doubleheader in Temecula on Saturday night, it made up for one of the most wretched undercards in recent memory. I haven't seen this many Midwesterners get blown away since the Dust Bowl... By the way, did Glen Johnson get robbed against Julio Gonzalez this past Friday night on Telefutura?