OSCAR QUIETS CRITICS, VARGAS.

Byline: DOUG KRIKORIAN

LAS VEGAS - Displaying all the skills of a great fighter that his advocates have insisted he always has been - and that he has displayed only periodically during his glittering career - Oscar De La Hoya on Saturday night dispensed a masterpiece that forever will shut the mouth of his long-time verbal tormentor, Fernando Vargas, as well as those critics who long have doubted his ranking among the top practitioners of his mean profession.

Indeed, De La Hoya threw lightening jabs like Muhammad Ali, moved briskly around the ring like Sugar Ray Leonard, fired combinations like Sugar Ray Robinson and threw left hooks like Joe Louis in methodically dismantling Vargas until the referee, Joe Cortez, mercifully stopped the lively hostilities at 1:48 of the 11th round in front of a sellout crowd of 11,425 patrons at the Mandalay Bay Events Center.

This was De La Hoya's watershed moment in the ring, as he wound up repulsing a rugged man who solemnly promised he would wreak mayhem on De La Hoya's anatomy but wound up being victimized himself by a De La Hoya who deftly used all the weapons in his vast armament throughout an eventful match that actually lived up to pre-fight expectations.

Not that Oscar De La Hoya had it easy.

Vargas had him against the ropes in the first round and dazed him with a volley of punches and repeated the act in the third as Vargas' rabid followers shrieked in delight.

But De La Hoya, despite a noticeable bruise on his right cheek, remained calm, kept moving to his left and kept sticking a jab into the reddening face of Vargas when he wasn't popping him with straight right hands and left hooks.

This is the way it went round after round, as De La Hoya slowly, relentlessly and determinedly broke down Vargas, who started bleeding profusely from a cut under his right eye in a sixth round that was dominated by De La Hoya as were the five others going into the fateful 11th.

This was the evening Oscar De La Hoya would finally secure his fistic legacy, when he would score a defining victory, as Roberto Duran did that rainy evening in Montreal when he scored a 15-round decision over Sugar Ray Leonard, or when Sugar Ray Leonard did that warm Las Vegas evening when he shattered the invincibility myth of Thomas Hearns, or when Larry Holmes did the same to Gerry Cooney.

This was 29-year-old Oscar De La Hoya, supposedly softened by his marriage and by his singing and by his 15-month layoff, showing he deserves to be ranked among the top pound-for-pound fighters in the world right there with Roy Jones Jr. and Bernard Hopkins with a dominant performance that was cruelly efficient.

``When I saw Vargas bleeding, I wanted more,'' De La Hoya said afterward, and he exacted terrible retribution on his rival from Oxnard who had been taunting him for years. ``I found out early Vargas has a good punch. I also found out early that I could escape Vargas' punches. And the more I escaped them, the more Vargas got tired.''

Near the end of the 10th round, De La Hoya drilled Vargas with a devastating left hook, and Vargas wobbled back to his corner, a man fated for almost certain oblivion.

The end was near for Vargas, a gallant man on this evening but one who was going up against a talented fighter who had underachieved in recent years but now was in peak form.

``What people don't understand about Oscar De La Hoya is that he's a great fighter,'' welterweight champion Vernon Forrest said recently. ``He showed that during those first nine rounds against Felix Trinidad. Trinidad never could hit him.''

Vargas certainly found that out much to his painful distress.

It's easier to shout obscenities and insults at De La Hoya than it is to hit him, as so many of Vargas' punches Saturday evening were easily avoided by the tricky De La Hoya.

As the fight unfolded, De La Hoya kept getting stronger while his opponent kept getting weaker.

And it was almost anticlimactic midway through the 11th round when De La Hoya fired 16 unanswered punches against Vargas after depositing him to the canvas with the kind of jackhammer left hook reminiscent of the one Sugar Ray Robinson once bounced off the chin of Gene Fullmer.

Blessedly, Cortez intervened, and De La Hoya again was the shining Golden Boy.

It was De La Hoya's 35th victory and 27th knockout in securing both the WBA and WBC 154-pound titles, but it was a lot more than just another big conquest and big payday for De La Hoya.

This was a fight the purists of the sport will be discussing for a long time because of the way De La Hoya asserted himself.

He was a great fighter Saturday evening, and not even his most passionate critics could say otherwise.

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Photo:

Oscar De La Hoya, left, unleashes a solid left during a flurry in the 11th round of his victory Saturday over Fernando Vargas.

Gene Blevins/Daily News