FOR GREATNESS, ONLY KO WILL DO.

Byline: Kevin Modesti

And now, without further ado, after weeks of analysis and reflection, here's who I pick to win the Oscar De La Hoya-Felix Trinidad welterweight title unification fight tonight in Las Vegas:

Either guy. By knockout.

This is more a wish than a prediction.

Please:

No black eye.

No nibbled ear.

No tummy ache.

No hallucinations.

No quitting in the corner.

No weeping in the ring.

No referee's screw-up.

No suspicious judging.

No technical knockout.

Just a clear-cut, teeth-rattling, lights-out KO.

I hope for a knockout not merely because that's the way a fight should end - in Joyce Carol Oates' words, ``one man collapsed and unconscious, the other leaping about the ring with his gloves raised in victory, the very embodiment of adolescent masculine fantasy.''

My adolescent masculine fantasies rarely involved mouthpieces and left hooks.

I hope for a knockout not merely because we've had enough ambiguous results from the heavyweight division to last a lifetime.

It's pretty clear by now that boxing will survive whatever black eyes it inflicts on itself.

I hope for a knockout because only with such a dominant victory, over the most-touted opponent either man has faced, can one of them earn the right to be called a great fighter.

And because the sports world needs all the greats it can get these days.

Did you notice something about that list unveiled by ESPN this week, a voting panel's idea of the 20 greatest athletes of the 20th century?

There wasn't a single active athlete on the list.

Yes, Jack Nicklaus competes on the Senior PGA Tour.

But Nicklaus hasn't been a factor on the regular tour in a decade, so he doesn't count.

Yes, one of today's very-good athletes might come to be recognized as great by the time the next such list is written.

But at this moment, after the retirements of Michael Jordan and Wayne Gretzky, there isn't a top-20 athlete on our TV or radar screens.

Five years ago we had four - Jordan, Gretzky, Carl Lewis and Martina Navratilova. When the 1990s began we had six - those plus Nicklaus and Magic Johnson.

At one point in the mid-'60s, seven of the top 20 were active - Nicklaus, Hank Aaron, Muhammad Ali, Jim Brown, Wilt Chamberlain, Willie Mays and Bill Russell.

To find the last year in which nobody on the list was competing, we have to go all the way back to 1904, right before Ty Cobb joined the major leagues.

America has more good athletes than ever, because the opportunities, the facilities and the rewards are more abundant than ever.

The same forces seem, though, to produce fewer great athletes.

It was easier to stand out before the advent of worldwide scouting and high-tech training raised the level of everybody's game.

But now there are 3,000 major-leaguers in baseball, basketball, football and hockey vying for our attention at any given time, as well as hundreds of soccer players, tennis players, golfers, runners and boxers.

And there are 24-hour sports channels giving more TV exposure to the last player on the bench than Ted Williams had in his prime.

If you're 10 years old these days, how do you separate the next Jim Thorpe, Babe Didrikson or Joe Louis from the rank and file?

You wait for moments like tonight and hope somebody rises to the occasion - and above it.