De La Hoya Adds Belt to Jewelry Collection : Boxing: 1992 gold medalist wins his first title by stopping Bredahl after 10 rounds. Toney survives a nasty cut to beat Littles.

By TIM KAWAKAMI

March 6, 1994 12 AM PT

TIMES STAFF WRITER

Looking at times frustrated, at times flawless, Oscar De La Hoya chased down and finally beat down Jimmi Bredahl to win on a technical knockout after 10 rounds Saturday night at the reopening of the Olympic Auditorium.

The Olympic crowd of 5,843, clearly looking for an early De La Hoya knockout, grew slightly restless as the fight wore on, but De La Hoya never lost control of the bout.

In the evening’s co-feature, International Boxing Federation super-middleweight champion James Toney took a bloody fourth-round technical knockout over No. 1 contender Tim Littles.

De La Hoya scored hard knockdowns in the first and second rounds, and Bredahl backpedaled the rest of the fight. Upon Dr. Adam Karns’ advice, with Bredahl’s right eye nearly swollen shut and his face covered with welts, the referee stopped the fight before the 11th round began.

The victory gave De La Hoya (12-0, 11 knockouts) his first world title, the World Boxing Organization junior-lightweight championship, which is not considered a major title.

“What I really wanted to do was make him suffer,” De La Hoya said. “Because he was saying things, like dropping me in the first round. So I wanted to hurt him and end the fight on my terms. Which is what I did.”

De La Hoya, 21, who after the fight said he never wanted to fight another left-hander again, said he had trouble landing combinations because of Bredahl’s evasive tactics.

“It was very, very frustrating,” De La Hoya said. “The way he was grabbing me, then running for his life, it was very tough to finish him off.”

De La Hoya sent Bredahl to the canvas midway through the first round with his first meaningful punch--a straight right hand to the chin.

“The first knockdown, it was sitting in my body the rest of the fight,” Bredahl said. “He was punching hard, yes he was. Not punching hard, maybe, but punching clean. And that hurts very much.”

Bredahl (16-1), from Denmark, was knocked down again the second round by a flurry begun by a left hook to the head, and began his clutching-and-running maneuvering from then on.

Bredahl said he hoped to wear down De La Hoya, who weighed in Saturday morning at 128 3/4 pounds, more than two pounds lighter than at any time in his professional career. The junior-lightweight limit is 130, which is what Bredahl weighed.

“My strategy was to kill his stomach,” Bredahl said. “But he killed my face first.”

De La Hoya won every round on every one of the judges’ cards, and through the middle rounds piled up the damage to Bredahl’s face.

De La Hoya, however, eschewed the normal tactic against backpedaling opponents--hard body shots--because he said he was never sure which way Bredahl would dance when he charged him.

“I was just stalking him,” De La Hoya said. “I knew he was going to get tired and that I’d get to him.”

In the 10th, Bredahl clearly began to tire, and De La Hoya scored his third knockdown of the fight with a sharp right hand to the side of Bredahl’s head early in the round.

For the rest of the round, Bredahl didn’t throw any punches, trying only to survive, and he did not protest when the fight was stopped.

It was the first time De La Hoya has fought past the eighth round.

De La Hoya said he would defend the WBO title one more time--probably in May in Las Vegas--then move up to the 135-pound lightweight division. After the May fight--against an opponent to be determined--his first lightweight bout will probably be against Jorge Paez.

“It’s a world title,” De La Hoya said of the WBO belt. “It means a lot.”

In the Toney fight, with the ringside doctor threatening to halt the fight because of a deep gash over Toney’s eye caused by a Littles’ head butt, Toney took care of that decision on his own.

A stoppage would have made the decision a draw. Toney (42-0-2, 28 KOs) suffered the cut on a butt by Littles after the third round, and he was bleeding profusely between rounds and into the fourth.

After a slow start, Toney began finding Littles with bruising rights in the third--landing a hard left hook that dazed Littles and gaining a knockdown with three rights to the chin.

Told by ringside physician Robert Karns between the third and fourth that he might have to stop the fight soon, Toney blitzed Littles furiously, blasting him with a right to the chin 20 seconds into the round, then forcing referee Pat Russell to stop the fight at 1:03 after sending Littles (24-1) flat on his back with a vicious right.

“When the doctor said that, I thought, ‘Oh man, I’ve got to do it now,’ ” Toney said. “I pushed the button.”

Manager Jackie Kallen said of the cut: “It scared me to death.”

Toney said it took 12 stitches to close the long gash and that he would probably have to take extra time off.

Toney’s belt was not in danger by the cut because under IBF rules, if a fighter is cut on a butt and is forced to stop before six rounds are over, the bout is declared a technical draw.

In an earlier fight between young welterweights, Bronco McKart raised his record to 16-1 with nine knockouts by taking a sixth-round technical knockout over Skipper Kelp (18-2-1).