In the purest form of a tangled business, the fundamental aim of boxing remains brutally simple. "Hit the mug in front of ya," as Oscar de la Hoya's grizzled old cornerman Gil Clancy grunted late on Saturday night in Las Vegas, "without gettin' hit yerself."

A smoky pall hung over the crammed casino but, looking at Clancy, it seemed more like a slow hiss of steam had begun to seep from the top of his grey head as he shook it again in weary anger.

A few hours earlier de la Hoya had fulfilled that stark principle of the ring over long stretches of his World Boxing Council and International Boxing Federation world welterweight title fight against Felix Trinidad, only to lose a deeply contentious majority decision.

It seemed a mild aberration that, having seen de la Hoya show Trinidad the difference between boxing and fighting, the first judge, Glen Hamada from Washington, scored a 114-114 draw. But it was shocking that Bob Loquist of Belgium and Jerry Roth, from Nevada, both favoured Trinidad by respective margins of 115-114 and 115-113.

For almost all but the last three rounds, de la Hoya evaded Trinidad expertly, while connecting with flurries of combinations and crisp blows to the body as well as the head. He was by then so sure of victory he spent the final nine minutes running from Trinidad to avoid, supposedly, the only possibility of losing the fight - by a late knockdown.

It proved an appalling miscalculation, costing him not only rounds 10 to 12 on all three cards but also his cherished unbeaten record. Yet his mistake was understandable for he had controlled the first three-quarters of the fight without subduing Trinidad.

Despite a red stream running from his nose and a cut and swollen left eye, the Puerto Rican marched relentlessly on. Although he always struggled to find his range, Trinidad's punches promised violent risk until the end.

"He's a great fighter," de la Hoya explained, "but the plan all night had been to give him a boxing lesson. I did that, even in the last rounds. I was so far in front that it was not even necessary for me to take any more chances. I thought I had it in the bag. I swear. I thought I had it all sewn up."

If de la Hoya believed he had been stitched up instead, suggesting wryly that "I now know how Lennox Lewis felt," Trinidad had to miss the post-fight press conference to have a less metaphorical set of stitches inserted at the local hospital.

There was other evidence in support of de la Hoya. The computerised fight-statistics revealed that, over 12 rounds, he threw 648 punches to Trinidad's 462 - and of the blows which landed, de la Hoya had almost a hundred more.

"What else do you have to do to win a fight?" de la Hoya asked. The answer, of course, was to varnish the reality of his opening authority with the kind of gloss which would have seen him stand and exchange blurring punches in at least one of the concluding rounds.

Apart from the second round, which Trinidad won decisively, de la Hoya answered every early assault with lateral movement and sharp counter-punching. His usually weaker right hand was as accurate as the left and, by the third, Trinidad was bleeding and slipping behind.

But, if his limitations were exposed, Trinidad's spirit was unquenchable. The way he drove forward, always trying to take the fight to de la Hoya, earned the support of a crowd studded with celebrities and corporate sponsors - most of whom booed the former "Golden Boy's" more calculated approach. The Mexican-American was not helped either by fatigue setting in just when he had a chance to clinch the fight. "We both ran out of gas," he suggested. "It's difficult not to when you have a good fighter in front of you."

If de la Hoya was relatively gracious, the unfortunate double act of Bob Arum and Don King did little to boost boxing's terrible image on another dingy night. King, in particular, was at his most obnoxious. "Oscar de la Hoya's shining star has been dimmed," he crowed at Arum, before cackling like a chicken - the bird with which he and Trinidad had compared de la Hoya during the fight's build-up.

For almost 40 minutes, King's ranting continued, as he tried to coerce Arum into a rematch which would reverse the balance of another US$100 million fight - so that King and Trinidad, this time, would take double the profit of their rivals.

Judging by the thunderous look on Arum's face, he will not readily accept any more public humiliation. "Who's Trinidad going to fight next?" he countered. "And how many people are going to pay good money to watch him fight? Oscar's still the guy."

That seems to be the sentiment shared by HBO, the cable television giant who sold The Fight of the Millennium with the stated hope that it would salvage boxing's credibility. In answer to King's baiting of Arum, HBO's vice-president Lou di Bella, interrupted to announce that he too believed de la Hoya had won the fight. As a result, de la Hoya's lucrative contract with the company will remain unchanged.

Arum indicated further that the certain rematch will be delayed "until we can get a different set of circumstances relating to the judging of a second fight," he said.

As always, it took a fighter to speak with more honesty than hyperbole. "It's very hard to deal with," de la Hoya said, "but, hey, this is boxing. It's a disappointing business."

With each night of disillusion, so it becomes increasingly difficult to imagine a way out of boxing's morass of confusion and dissent - and especially not with the seemingly ageless King whooping away at the forefront. But, still, some of us try.

This was no classic; but neither was it a farce in the mould of a Mike Tyson fight. And while they are a very long way from being among the fighters of this century, there is still much to admire in both Felix Trinidad and Oscar de la Hoya.