The second fight between Arturo Gatti and Micky Ward was as one-sided a boxing exhibition as their first battle was close and competitive, but don't count out the possibility of a dramatic third battle between two of boxing's toughest guys.

Ward won the first fight with sheer will power and his trusty left hook to the liver in an all-out fist fight that no boxing fan will soon forget, but Gatti dominated the rematch to the fight of the year for 2002 with an excellent display of determined boxing that may put a rubbermatch in question.

Does Gatti have Ward's number? Is Ward old at 37 years old?

Perhaps, but the chemistry of these two gutsy junior welterweights could prove the odds wrong in the a third fight. The producers of HBO's award winning World Championship Boxing series dressed up Saturday's introduction to the telecast of Ward-Gatti II to look like one of those old grainy black and white Gillette Friday Night Fights shows from the 1950s in homage the throwback style the two fighters usually exhibit.

The hope on the part of HBO's executives was that a Ward-Gatti rivalry could be akin to the brutal three-fight series between Tony Zale and Rocky Graziano. All three fights between the hall of fame middleweights were savage battles that ended in dramatic knockouts. However, with the boxing clinic Gatti put on in Atlantic City Saturday night, that scenario was ruined.

But there is another great three-fight rivalry that a Ward-Gatti series could try to live up to ‹ Muhammad Ali and Joe Frazier. No, Ward and Gatti do not posses the superlative championship skills of those to hall of fame heavyweights, or their world titles, but they are equal to any great fighter in history in terms of heart and grit.

The Ali-Frazier trilogy went like this: the first bout was a great battle in which the pressure fighter with the mean left hook out-worked the more talented former world champion with sheer will power, even dropping the boxer late in the fight. (Sound familiar?)

The second bout was highly anticipated, but lacked drama and intensity of the first bout. The boxer fought his fight and dominated most of the action, even hurting the pressure fighter early in the one-sided contest. (Sound familiar?)

In the classic third bout between Ali and Frazier, the celebrated "Thrilla in Manilla", the pressure fighter who was thought to be washed up proved that he still had some life by forcing a brutal, toe-to-toe war that exceeded all expectations. Don't say the same thing can't happen between Ward and Gatti. These guys have made careers out of proving critics wrong.

And if a third fight does indeed go down, don't call it the "Vanilla Thrilla" like HBO's Larry Merchant joked before the second bout. Yeah, these guys are white, and the way they threw down in the first fight reminded many old timers of the 1930s, '40s and '50s when Caucasians of Irish, Italian and Jewish backgrounds like Billy Conn, Rocky Marciano and Barney Ross packed stadiums on the East Coast.

But come on, it's not fair to pigeonhole Gatti and Ward simply as "Caucasian warriors". At their best, these honest fighters transcend skin color, national regions or a specific decade.

That first battle they waged on May 18th can be compared to the slugfests that Henry Armstrong put on with Lou Ambers and Ross in the late '30s, or the brawls that Bobby Chacon staged with Danny Lopez and Rafael "Bazooka" Limon in the '70s, or the brutal bouts that Matthew Saad Muhammad fought with Yaqui Lopez in '78 and '80.

If the second fight didn't live up to your expectations, give the third fight a chance to blow you away ‹ just give the guys some time to heal from a very tough 2002.