I guess I just don't follow your logic.
In my mind, I think that its a greater display of determination and *ahem* toughness to walk away from a plane crash, climb to the top of a cathedral, and beat the hell out of a few people before you take down The Joker.
Of course, I'm definitely not implying that Bale is an inferior Batman, I'm just saying..the way people harp on the Ray Charles guy beating up Keaton after a plane crash is pretty annoying, considering the fact that Bale's Batman has more or less lost the final fight scenes in both of his movies.
I'm not harping on Keaton's determination. I'm just trying to say that it is a different kind of fighting between Keaton and Bale. Keaton's Batman seemed to have more of the traditional super hero/action movie fights while Bale's seemed to have more of the "Bourne Identity(for lack of a better term)" style of fighting where he just easily owns the goons.
Personally I like the latter version of fighting applied to Batman. I think Bale looked like a total badass doing all that. I find it so cool to see him tear into the badguys like that.
I had a really hard time following the fight scenes in Begins, so I got no real pleasure out of seeing Batman take out multiple people in seconds. I noticed him doing it a few times in The Dark Knight, but to be honest with you, it just didn't really grab my attention. It didn't have an "epic" feeling, if that makes any sense.
Hey, to each his own for the most part. But if gliding across the Hong Kong skyline to crash through a window and then take down a guy and send him through a glass wall isn't epic, I don't know what is.
Frankly, I remember shaking my head in amazement at how easily Ra's seemed to own Batman in Begins. He's clearly just going to town on him in the monorail, it's not until Batman pulls the whole "mind your surroundings!" thing at the end that he turns it around.
Dude, you should watch the fight again because it was pretty back and forth. Batman shattered his sword, gave him some good kicks, pounced on him, threw him around and gave him some good punches in the face. And still when Ras was on top of him and Batman turned the tables, Batman was still able to swap positions with Ras and get on top. I'd say it was a pretty even fight.
Come to think of it, the ending fight with The Joker in The Dark Knight was pretty much the same deal. Batman gets owned through the whole thing, pinned to the ground, taunted, and then he pulls something out of nowhere to turn things around.
That was more of a struggle than a fight, and it's pretty much the only way a Batman/Joker confrontation can go WITHOUT Batman totally kicking his ass. Honestly, I wish I saw Batman get more than a kick in, but Joker just got the early advantage with the dogs and the pipe and such.
I'm not about to sit here and go over all of their various encounters, but the fact is that Batman in the comics has an easier time with Ra's than Bale's Batman in the movies. Comic book Ra's gets really angry and says some cryptic stuff, but when it comes to a fight, Batman more or less hands him his ass
That's the thing though, there HAVE been various encounters. Ras has been around since the seventies. There have been enough encounters where they have fought pretty evenly.