Tito, Winky talk tough

Tuesday, May 10, 2005 | 9:16 a.m.

During his 29-month hiatus from boxing that ended last fall, Felix "Tito" Trinidad continually heard the same two requests, over and over, from fight fans.

First, Trinidad said, they would beg him to return to the ring.

"I was out there with all the fans, and they were always asking me, please Tito, come back," Trinidad said Monday in his penthouse suite at the MGM Grand. "Without you, boxing is not the same."

Then they would implore him to beat the living daylights out of dastardly Bernard Hopkins to avenge his lone career loss.

"Yeah, almost all of them would say that next," Trinidad said.

Trinidad (42-1, 35 knockouts) might well get a chance to even the score with Hopkins, but first he must survive a dangerous middleweight showdown against Winky Wright (48-3, 25 KOs) on Saturday at the MGM Grand Garden Arena.

The scheduled 12-rounder will be available on HBO Pay-Per-View (6 p.m.).

Wright, a consensus top-10 fighter, pound-for-pound, steps up to 160 pounds after completing a housecleaning at 154 with a pair of victories against Shane Mosley last year.

Before going into temporary retirement in 2002, Trinidad, a gifted knockout artist, graced the upper echelon of those same mythical yet significant top-10 lists, thanks in part to victories in megafights against Oscar De La Hoya and Fernando Vargas. Only his inactivity has prevented him from returning to the top 10, pound-for-pound, and a win against Wright would vault Trinidad back to the top.

"Winky deserves a chance to fight me," Trinidad said. "He's one of the few fighters out there who really wants to fight me. He challenged me, and I answered that challenge. ...

"I give a lot of credit to Winky. He's a great champion, and I've always been willing to fight the best. He's been fighting a lot of years at 154, and I feel he will be great at 160. But no matter what he brings to the ring, I'm going to defeat him."

Trinidad is certainly backing up his claim that he wishes to fight only world-class opponents. At this stage of his career, Trinidad said, he has little use for tuneup fights.

In his return to the boxing ring last Oct. 2 at Madison Square Garden, Trinidad, now 32, fought Ricardo Mayorga, a tough and unpredictable former welterweight champ. Trinidad prevailed by eighth-round technical knockout.

Wright, a defense-oriented southpaw, presents a stark contrast in style from Mayorga.

"I cannot compare Winky's style to anyone I've fought before," Trinidad said. "As far as toughness, he's a very unique fighter. He dominated at 154, and I respect him for that.

"But if Winky thinks this is going to be an easy fight, he's dead wrong. I hit hard with both hands, and I'm not going into the ring to play. ... I can hurt him. If I hurt him, I'll try to end it right there, and he knows that."

Though his energy this week is focused on Wright, it's easy to sense that Trinidad feels he has unfinished business with Hopkins, who stopped him in the 12th round on Sept. 29, 2001, at Madison Square Garden.

In a public appearance leading to that fight, Hopkins insulted Trinidad and his homeland when he famously threw the Puerto Rican flag onto the ground.

"I know what he did was wrong, and (Hopkins) knows it was wrong," Trinidad said of the flag incident. "I make no excuses -- he beat me. As the fight went on, my stamina went down and his stayed up. That was the difference in the outcome of that fight."

Originally scheduled for Sept. 15, 2001, the fight was postponed for two weeks of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

Trinidad's psyche might have been clouded by the aftermath of the terrorist attacks. While Hopkins returned to his home near Philadelphia, Trinidad remained in New York and spent time serving food to rescue workers at ground zero in lower Manhattan.

"I feel bad for what happened and for the people who died," Trinidad said. "I wish it would not have happened.

"If that act did not happen, it would have been a different result that night, a different fight. The few days (following the attacks) affected me."

It's an open secret in boxing that Trinidad made his decision to retire primarily because he could not lure Hopkins into a rematch.

"The big fight that I really wanted was not there," Trinidad said.

Down the hallway in his penthouse suite at the MGM on Monday, Wright was not at all bothered by his opponent's discussion of Hopkins.

"I enjoy it," Wright said. "Shane Mosley made the same mistake (before his fights with Wright), focusing on (possible fights against) Tito. And where's he at now?

"Let Tito do what Tito do. On Saturday, we're gonna go face-to-face, man-to-man."

Wright exuded a relaxed confidence in predicting that he'll hand Trinidad the second defeat of his celebrated career.

"When Trinidad fought Hopkins there was a lot of stuff going on, a lot of stuff in New York," Wright said. "A lot of excuses for Tito. There's no excuses this time. I'm gonna win."