Actor Mario Lopez, right, and director Bert Marcus at Gios Brooklyn Boxing… (Ricardo DeAratanha, Los…)
Mario Lopez is sweating. And panting. And, if you look closely, grimacing.
As he stands in the corner of a boxing ring awaiting the bell that will signal the next round, the "Extra" host sways nervously in a pair of loose-fitting trunks that make his short legs seem even more compressed. The Crest-commercial smile he flashes while doling out celebrity palaver for the benefit of a syndicated-television audience is absent. In fact, Lopez's mouth is nearly shut, the only thing visible through his slightly pursed lips is a mouth-guard specked with blood.
The lights shine harshly, as they do on the "Extra" set at the Grove. But this time there are no coiffed guests to banter with, no squealing fans to sign autographs for, no army of assistants to run out for one of his preferred meals, a calorie-conscious mix of sashimi and avocado. There is just one other man in the ring, and he doesn't look happy.
Jimmy Lange, a professional middleweight, stands diagonally across from Lopez, jumping assuredly from side to side and loosening his neck muscles in the way professional boxers do. Lange has won 35 of his 40 pro bouts, more than two-thirds of them by knockout. He does not seem to know who Lopez is. He does not seem to care.
This is a charity fight in a makeshift ring inside the Beverly Hilton ballroom. For Lopez, though, it might as well be a championship card at the MGM Grand. All around the ring sit people he desperately wants to impress — well-known boxing promoters, and trainers, and even former fighters, people like Jake LaMotta, Ray "Boom Boom" Mancini and Micky Ward, the welterweight recently made famous by Mark Wahlberg in the film "The Fighter." The setting also doesn't lessen the pain of Lange's haymakers.
The bell rings. Lopez charges, getting in a few jabs at Lange's torso. The pro fighter tolerates them for a moment and then, in the let's-get-this-over-with way that Harrison Ford draws his pistol on the swordfighter in "Raiders of the Lost Ark," winds up for a punishing right hook. His punch lands squarely between Lopez's cheek and jaw. The actor's neck snaps back like a spring-loaded toy.
There are many ways a Hollywood pretty boy can find amusement. Getting in the ring with pro fighters to reinvent yourself as a boxer, as Lopez is doing, seems like perhaps the least pleasant.
Pretty much since he first set teenage girls' hearts aflutter playing A.C. Slater — the mulleted, garishly attired Army brat of early '90s camp-hit "Saved by the Bell" — Mario Lopez has been ambivalent about his fame. He knew he was attracting a heavily female audience, fans who appreciated his harmless good looks and cheesy charm. This wasn't entirely a bad thing. It was a Hollywood meal ticket, and it made finding a girlfriend a lot easier. But the teenybopper image, he thought, didn't fit with either his working-class roots or his high school wrestling background. And it didn't square with the serious actor he believed he could be.
"I'm not dumb. I knew my audience is mainly women," Lopez said a few weeks after the Lange fight. "But I wanted people to see another side of me. I wanted men to see another side of me."
After "Saved" and its ill fated spin-off, "Saved by the Bell: The College Years," came to an end, Lopez embarked on a career odyssey of sorts. He starred in a horror film titled "A Crack in the Floor." He did a multi-episode arc on "Nip/Tuck," FX's dark drama. He even took the lead role in a television biopic about gay Olympic diver Greg Louganis; he figured it wouldn't win him any Emmys, but he hoped it would make America finally take him seriously.
It didn't work. America preferred the smiling, dimpled Mario Lopez.
So Lopez developed another profile: as a purveyor of low-budget nonfiction entertainment. He can come off as pleasant in an empty sort of way, a kind of poor man's Ryan Seacrest, and that appeal has secured him a very profitable niche. Turn on the TV most weekdays and you won't have to wait long to see Lopez somewhere — on "Extra," on MTV shows such as "America's Best Dance Crew" or "MTV's Top Pop Group." Switch to the Latino-oriented Si TV and there he is again, co-hosting a dating program. This coming season he'll host a celebrity-reality show on the CW called "H8R," about tabloid personalities confronting their enemies.
There's hardly a beauty pageant he hasn't presided over — "Miss America," " Miss Universe," Miss Teen USA." And of course there's "Dancing With the Stars," on which he and partner Karina Smirnoff quickstepped their way to the finals in 2006.
But Lopez believes he's simply fallen into the hosting jobs and the dancing competitions the way someone good with numbers might wind up an accountant. He has a different a passion that goes beyond any Hollywood job: boxing.
