Despite Loss, Vargas Keeping His Chin Up

So when will Fernando Vargas be ready for a rematch against Felix Trinidad?

How about tomorrow?

Vargas, his body bruised but his spirit intact, said Tuesday that a second fight against the man who defeated him on a 12th-round technical knockout Saturday night at Las Vegas’ Mandalay Bay Events Center is his top priority.

No hesitation.

No tune-up fight.

No monetary demands.

“I don’t care about money,” Vargas said. “I’ll do it for a trophy. I just want to get him in the ring again. If he wants to argue about money, it won’t come down to that. I’ll beat him and then go after the money.”

Vargas, who was knocked down five times in Saturday’s match, showed no visible signs of the beating, but acknowledged that his groin area, where he took three low blows, was bruised.

Trinidad certainly didn’t knock the cockiness or pride out of Vargas, who tried to shrug off the beating. But he is not fooling his promoter, Kathy Duva.

“He received a great amount of punishment,” she said. “He has earned a vacation and we are going to make sure he takes it. We love him, but he needs a little time.

“What would it prove for him to fight Trinidad again now? In a year or two, it would be a more interesting fight. But it wouldn’t make any sense at all now.”

And how about a Vargas-Oscar De La Hoya all-Southern California showdown?

“That would be a beautiful, fabulous fight,” Duva said. “It would make more sense right now.”

Whoever Vargas fights, it will be for a lot more than a trophy. Saturday night’s fight, which was for Trinidad’s 154-pound World Boxing Assn. title and Vargas’ International Boxing Federation crown, drew 520,000 pay-per-view buys. That’s 100,000 more than last month’s Lennox Lewis-David Tua heavyweight title fight.

In defeat, Vargas seems to have grown in popularity. His Tuesday news conference, held at the Friars Club in Beverly Hills, drew a media army worthy of a superstar.

“Since the fight, I have received nothing but love,” Vargas said. “A lot of people apparently thought I didn’t have it in me. I don’t understand that, but now they know I have it.”

But even Vargas acknowledged that, having never been off his feet in 20 previous professional fights, he was as stunned as his fans when he found himself on the canvas only 23 seconds into Saturday’s fight after getting rocked by a left hook.

“He caught me cold,” Vargas said. “I thought to myself, ‘What am I doing down here? I am not supposed to be down here.’ He surprised me.”

But Vargas insists that the key to the fight was not the devastating knockdown blows, but rather the low blows.

“That took a lot out of me,” Vargas said. “I don’t feel my legs ever fully recovered after the first low blow. I didn’t have the spring in my legs. I didn’t move from side to side, but stayed right there because, that way, I didn’t feel as much pain.

“I had him hurt, so he went to the low blows. That was a smart tactic in my book.”

Vargas, who turns 23 Thursday, doesn’t think Saturday’s loss will, in any way, dim his bright future.

“I’m still fresh, I’m still young, I’m still learning,” he said. “I got hurt, but I understand I’m in the hurt business. You live and learn and you have to learn to lose. Sugar Ray Leonard lost, Julio Cesar Chavez lost, so why not Fernando Vargas?”