I love boxing analogies as they relate to politics.

Here is my take on last night’s Round Two of the Barack Obama-Mitt Romney series of fights.

If it had gone on another, oh, 10 minutes, moderator Candy Crowley might have had to stop the contest on a technical knockout. The Republican challenger, Romney, had more or less held his own for most of the 90-minute bout. Then came a couple of key moments that provided the president the opening he needed to finish strong.

Romney got a question about whether women should be paid equally with men when they do the same job as their male counterparts. He talked at some length about how as governor of Massachusetts he sought female applicants for staff jobs. He didn’t deal directly with the question: Do you support pay equity? Obama teed that one up. He talked about his signing of the Lillie Ledbetter Act, which mandates equal pay for equal work. Do you think undecided female voters took note of that? Of course they did.

Then Romney stepped in it once again on Libya. He accused the president of playing politics with the tragic attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi and the deaths of four Americans, including the U.S. ambassador to Libya, Christopher Stevens. He said it took Obama two weeks to declare that it was an act of terror. Wrong. Crowley corrected Romney, noting that Obama made that declaration the very next day at the White House. Obama then turned to Romney and said it was “offensive” to assume that “anyone on my time” would play politics with such a tragedy. “That’s not what I do as president. That’s not what I do as commander in chief,” Obama said while glaring at the pretender, er, contender.

And then Obama finished with his sole reference to Romney’s infamous “47-percent” remark, made in the spring during a fundraiser in Florida. You remember that, right? Romney said 47 percent of voters are dependent on government, they’re “victims” and those are the folks who’ll back Obama’s re-election no matter what Romney says or does. Obama unloaded a flurry of rhetorical punches, declaring that many of those among the 47 percent are students trying to obtain student loans, “heroes” returning from the battlefield in search of starting new lives as civilians, people who depend on Social Security or Medicare.

I have to agree with the likes of George Will and Chris Matthews – one conservative pundit, one liberal – who said this presidential debate was the best they’d ever seen.

I am sure my Republican friends will take serious issue with me on this blog post. They’ll say the president’s economic record stinks. They’ll accuse him of covering up what happened in Benghazi. Fine. We’ll still be friends … I hope.

I can’t wait for the bell to ring for Round Three next week.