It's rare in life that we're presented with a clear-cut side to root for. When that fairy tale notion of Good vs. Evil makes itself manifest in palpable, flesh and blood heroes and villains. Even in the world of sports, a culture plagued by incessant over-dramatization from journalists and fans alike, rarely are we given the opportunity to rally collectively behind an individual or a team. But it happened this past weekend at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas.

The contrast between Oscar De La Hoya and Ricardo Mayorga could not have been more striking when their bout was announced. The Golden Boy squaring off against the wild man. The multi-millionaire, multi-media giant against the Nicaraguan drug-runner with bullet hole scars and a habit of smoking and drinking in the ring. The fundamentally flawless boxer against the free swinging brawler. It was the kind of matchup that can make boxing so gripping, even in the modern age of corruption, faltering pay-per-view revenue and empty seats.

But cultural and stylistic differences alone were not what made boxing fans so decidedly favor De La Hoya last Saturday night. Boxing is a sport built on the rags to riches notion of slum kid rising to glory against all odds. The sport is littered with ex-cons carrying checkered pasts. The boxing culture is an almost infinitely forgiving one.

What made anyone with the slightest respect for sportsmanship and fair play root for De La Hoya had everything to do with Mayorga's behavior leading up to the fight. In essence, Mayorga and his antics were able to accomplish what the Golden Boy's extensive marketing staff have never been able to: unify the entire boxing public behind the popular but divisive De La Hoya.

Just Ricardo Being Ricardo at one of Several Over-the-Top Press Conferences 

The line between boxing histrionics and inexcusable disrespect is a blurry one. We look back at Muhammad Ali as a master of competitive mind games. His verbal tirades against opponents have been diluted by decades into mere strategy, harmless maneuvering in the pursuit of victory. But for fighters like Joe Frazier, the intensely personal attacks from the acerbic tongue of Ali left emotional scars that remained long after each man's gloves had been hung up for good.

Even in a sport that welcomes this kind of psychological brutality, Mayorga clearly went too far. He discredited De La Hoya's status as an authentic Mexican, claiming that Mexican residents of Oscar's native East Los Angeles had called him personally to wish him well and plead for a knockout of their hometown fighter. He went farther, calling into question De La Hoya's manhood, and ultimately his sexuality, with a torrent of disturbing homophobic slurs. The wild man stood on a chair, shouted, and grabbed his crotch. He claimed that Oscar De La Hoya's trainer, Floyd Mayweather, Sr., had fought like a "coward" during his own ring career.

But the indelible impression made by Mayorga's comments stemmed from his vulgar references to De La Hoya's wife and young son. There is a fundamental, unspoken law in the sporting constitution that states, "No matter how bad you hate the other guy, no matter how many of his teeth you leave imbedded in the field, leave his family out of it." Actually, this doesn't even qualify as a sports rule. It's a matter of simple decency. Maybe if you're Rick Fox, and Doug Christie's wife has just sent her Prada bag crashing against your temple, you mention the other guy's family. But that's about the only exception. Hell, even Raja Bell's mother offered Kobe Bryant a hug after the Lakers had been sent packing in game seven of the Western Conference Playoffs.

This wasn't the first time Oscar De La Hoya had been treated with severe contempt prior to a big time fight. His bout against archrival Fernando Vargas in 2002 was as vitriolic as any fight in recent memory. Vargas, like Mayorga, used Oscar's chiseled good looks and forays into singing as fuel for assaults on De La Hoya's racial identity and manhood.

De La Hoya's dominant performance that night in Las Vegas went a long way toward softening Vargas' unrelenting machismo. In fact, Vargas' career went into a tailspin almost immediately following his loss to De La Hoya. The Golden Boy is enjoying the last laugh in that dispute to this day. After nearly twenty months of inactivity following a controversial knockout at the hands of Bernard Hopkins, many doubted whether Oscar would be able to answer this newest round of insults against the dangerous Mayorga.

From the opening bell it was obvious that any doubts concerning Oscar's heart or ability to rise to the occasion were unfounded. To no one's surprise, Mayorga charged like a bull from the opening bell. His manufactured air of invincibility lasted about two minutes, when a precise De La Hoya left hook sent Mayorga crashing to the canvas.

Over the course of the next five rounds De La Hoya used his intense focus and supreme skill to dissect the technically inferior Mayorga. With every perfectly placed punch De La Hoya forcibly erased one of Mayorga's savage remarks. Even indifferent observers had to chuckle at the sight of a man eating crow in front of 20,000 spectators and a television audience of millions.

Maybe I should have talked about his dead mother instead.

Some will say Mayorga's behavior leading up to the fight was clearly a marketing ploy, and that the obvious motives behind his comments excuse them to some degree. His record coming into the bout with De La Hoya was 27-6, hardly an intimidating history for a big time prizefighter. That kind of record wouldn't have gotten him the top seed in the NBA's Eastern Conference 33 games into the season.

The simple truth is that Mayorga is not a great fighter, and has undoubtedly been counseled by the Don King camp to make an ass of himself in an effort to increase interest. He has managed to remain in the public eye because of his reputation as a reckless wild man, despite having lost his last three major fights. The argument will be made that all of the extra-curricular events leading up to the fight were what made it so exciting, and for that we should thank Mayorga and his filthy mouth for the intensity of the moment.

If we commend Mayorga for his inhuman behavior outside of the ring just because it made a fight more interesting, then boxing may be in more trouble than any of us realize. If this kind of manufactured, Jerry Springer style, below the belt conduct is what it takes to sell 875,000 pay-per-view orders, then the problems in boxing reach well beyond the much-maligned heavyweight division. Even in a violent, savage sport there have to be boundaries. Mayorga crossed lines and ran his mouth and in the end got exactly what he deserved: a mouth full of canvas and a shameful march back to the locker room.

I would have rooted for De La Hoya in the fight anyway. I've always liked him, and think many of the criticisms leveled at him over the course of his career have been unfair. But when all was said and done, I turned off the television Saturday night with the satisfying knowledge that I had dropped 50 bucks to see something that happens far too infrequently these days: the good guy, or at the very least the undeniably better guy, coming out on top, scoring a defeat for those of us who still believe that sportsmanship and honor have their place in our modern age.