Boxing Versus Tennis

Rafael Nadal has an 8-5 record versus Roger Federer. Every time they play -- and they may meet again at the end of the current U.S. Open -- it's still exciting. It's good TV. Can you imagine two boxers fighting each other 13 times? Who would watch?

Sugar Ray Robinson fought Jake LaMotta six times. By today's standards that would he unheard of, mostly because of the brutality of boxing. Ward-Gatti XIII? It would be sickening.

But there's something else. Losses count so much these days in boxing. In tennis, losses are just history. Somehow, watching tennis, we are better able to appreciate that at the highest levels of competition, it is all about which guy brings more on that particular night. We get it that one match is just one match, and it doesn't need to settle for all time which athlete is superior. That ought to be the case in boxing too. In boxing, what a guy brings into the ring on a particular night, mentally as much as physically, is as important as training and skill. But, no matter, we weigh losses so heavily. If one guy beats another twice, we consider the matter settled.

Rod Laver went 75-66 in matches over Ken Rosewall, according a pre-Open story on tennis rivalries in the New York Times. Winning was all about who came with his best game. This isn't a suggestion that boxing should push its most fierce rivalries beyond fighting trilogies, to pentilogies and dodecadilogies. It's just a reminder to myself that often a loss in the ring can be merely an off night from a good fighter.

Hey, I'm not the first boxing guy to compare the sport to tennis. In Larry Merchant's 1976 book Ringside Seat at the Circus, a compilation of his mid-Seventies columns from the New York Post, Merchant writes: "Tennis has supplanted boxing as our main one-on-one game." Both have faded since then. Maybe one-on-one isn't enough enymore. Now an individual athlete -- Tiger Woods, Lance Armstrong, the NASCAR driver of the week -- has to beat the world for his sport to be popular.

Let's hit the links: At BoxingScene.com, Cliff Rold says he's tired of pound-for-pound rankings, in part because they are meaningless. A couple of looks at the tough Paterson, N.J., background of junior welterweight Kendall Holt, who fights Saturday night: Michael Woods at ESPN.com. Tim Smith in the New York Daily News. Keith Idec in the Herald News writes that Henry Crawford, an undefeated prospect also from Paterson, is out of luck this week. He'd been on the card to fight this Friday night in Atlantic City, then been switched to the undercard of Vargas-Mayorga. When that bout was postponed, Crawford couldn't get back into the ESPN2 show at Boardwalk Hall.