Dear Diary

3 AM: She dumped me and walked out a couple of years ago. I never understood why. Endless pleading, well-planned searching, and desperate scheming couldn’t bring her back. Cascading rivers of booze couldn’t dim her memory. I soon even completely lost track of her whereabouts, despite long days and even longer nights of scouring Google, MySpace, and, of course, craigslist.

Maybe you have seen her. She goes by the name of the Heavyweight Championship of the World.

I know I’ll never have another love like her. My friends tell me that I’ll get over her one day soon, but even New York’s best bartenders have only succeeded in making me soggy. They also tell me to check out those who say that they are just like her, but all those WB-S’ers are like cheap hookers are to true love: Even the amateurs are better than the pros in that racket.

They also tell me that while I may never have another love like her, or at least feel that way right now, I should really try to make an effort to take up this new offer I just had. Maybe I can learn to love her, even though it will never be the same.

I dunno. I’m going to put on that Billie Holiday album now and go to sleep, maybe to consider it with a clearer head when I wake up at noon.

12 Noon: She already has sent me a couple of e-mails. I even went to her coming out party Monday, downtown somewhere in Tribeca, I think it was. When the streets in Manhattan are no longer numbered, I get lost.

Her name, this one who is courting me, is Superfighter.

Big George was there to sell me on her. He is the same age as me, and although we never were friends or exactly saw eye-to-eye, I always paid attention to his advice.

He agreed that this new love will never replace the old one, or even be the same. He had very good reason to know that, as if almost by instinct. And he even said that one day my baby might just come back, although he cautioned me not to wait for her because we are, after all, only getting older.

That made a lot of sense to me, but it still didn’t answer all the questions I had. How could this new Superfighter actually bedazzle me like the Heavyweight Championship of the World?

This Australian businessman named Steven Duval was there telling me how sweet she will be. I think he is her father. He tried to get me to forget my old sweetheart, claiming, “Nothing compares.”

Oh really?

My Heavyweight Championship of the World was handed down from one champion to another, until she just disappeared as I said. She used to be owned by the man who beat the man who beat the man – with a few breaks in-between but eventually usually by the best big guy out there.

Duval wants to give his Superfighter to one of eight guys, only seven of whom have been named, an unknown number actually signed, and only two were at her party – and neither of whom were heavyweights.

True, the two who were there, O’Neil Bell and Steve Cunningham, are at the top of the 200-pound-and-under guys. But how could they make me fall in love with her like Ali, Louis, Frazier, Dempsey, Marciano, Holmes, Tyson, and even Big George did?

Chris Byrd and Sam Peter are supposed to be in the running for Superfighter. But they each recently were beaten by Wladimir Klitschko, a wannabe Heavyweight Champion of the World who is not fighting the other wannabes. So if Byrd or Peter became the Superfighter, what would it mean?

Then they have Shannon Briggs, an old buddy of Big George’s, and the Olympic gold medalist Alexander Povetkin, who has had only seven pro fights, all four- or six-rounders. It is very hard to conceive of how these guys can make me love her like my old baby. And it gets worse: Tye Fields. Didn’t he used to hold the WCW tag-team title?

Duval thinks this will all make me fall in love again. He said that after his heavyweight party this fall down under (which has already been postponed from August to maybe October), he wants to have a big party in New York next year for middleweights. But he was not certain that the athletic commission folks would accept his new rules: three four-round fights in a one-night tournament, 12-ounce gloves as yet not designed, no draws, instant replay to determine head butts and fouls, special scoring to encourage action, losers returning in the tournament if a winner can’t continue, etc. New York may actually be one of the toughest places to allow us to fall in love. I’m just not sure where would be better. And that’s assuming that her daddy makes good on his promises.

Love, though, is a bizarre and unpredictable thing. If you dress this new baby right, make her sexy and smart enough, and shine the light on her the right way, she just may start to get your juices bubbling. There are plenty of guys who drool over the fat old broads to whom they are hitched who would not trade them for a minute for a Halle Berry, Julia Roberts, Beyonce, J-Lo, Madonna, or even – forgive me, please – Pam Grier. What makes one guy tingle makes another cringe. That’s not exactly what the diversity advocates have in mind, but it’s what we have in the makeup of our bodies.

I just might give this new chick a chance. I don’t want to be cruel to someone seeking love like my old flame was to me. And I do need some warmth and companionship, and not just some drinking buddy.

But if I do take the plunge with her, I don’t see how I can avoid feeling that she can only be second best. And if my baby ever comes back to me, I know I’ll only have one choice. I’d be out the door faster than my high-speed broadband connection, ready to jump back into the arms of my main squeeze forever, the Heavyweight Championship of the World.