If Sonny Crockett took on Nash Bridges, Nash would win hands-down and this is why:

Sonny is too much with angst
Nash is a little more happy go lucky

Sonny has issue and personal problems as well as problems as a cop
Nash is the cool, calm & collected type when it comes to bigwigs(hint: FBI, Internal Affairs, criminals)

Sonny and his unconvential lifesyle like living on a boat with an alligator
Nash lives in a nice townhouse

Sonny cares too much about what others think
Nash doesn't care at all what people think of him and/or if people like him, He shrugs it off like "So what else is new??"

Crockett!!

http://www.avclub.com/article/crockett-and-tubbs-reunited-on-inash-bridgesi-but--84144

Johnson didn’t exactly have it easy in the years immediately after Miami Vice either. His movie career didn’t take off the way he’d expected, and he became a frequent tabloid target thanks to his on-again/off-again relationships with the likes of Barbra Streisand and Melanie Griffith. Then Nash Bridges—combined with Johnson’s strong supporting turn in the 1996 golf comedy Tin Cup—eased him into the next phase of his career. He downshifted from international superstar to appealingly low-key screen presence, more in line with a classic Hollywood character actor than a leading man.

[pagebreak]

In that sense, Nash Bridges served as Johnson’s long, last hurrah as an action hero. Nash Bridges arrived on CBS at a time when the network was hungry for hits, but not so hungry that it ventured far beyond its reputation for family-friendly heartwarmers and cozy crime stories, both aimed at older audiences. Pre-CSI, CBS loaded up on shows like Diagnosis Murder and Walker Texas Ranger, which emphasized colorful characters and uncomplicated plots. Nash Bridges reportedly began life as a TV movie co-written by Hunter S. Thompson and Johnson, until CBS suggested a series instead, albeit one less edgy then what Thompson had in mind. According to the lore, in Thompson’s original conception, Johnson would’ve played a drug-addicted cop in deep with the mob. The final version of Nash was much softer, dealing more with the hero’s relationships with his wisecracking partner Joe Dominguez (played by Cheech Marin), his eccentric father Nick (James Gammon), his Grateful Dead-loving technophile colleague Harvey Leek (Jeff Perry), and the various other cops, crooks, and family members who become Nash regulars over the course of its six seasons. And while Nash Bridges did deal with the rougher side of crime by the Bay, many episodes had comic subplots too, usually driven by Joe and Nick concocting some crazy scheme. (In “Wild Card,” for example, the two try to breed a racehorse, Mr. Woody, who turns out to be impotent.)

But while Nash Bridges wasn’t trying to redefine the cop show—at least not to the degree Miami Vice did—it was hardly hacky. On his “Wild Card” commentary track, Johnson says that as executive producer, he insisted on location shooting as much as possible, preferably near waterscapes, so San Francisco and its surroundings could help define the characters. He also wanted the camera to move, even during driving scenes, so the frame would always be a little off-kilter. Nash Bridges was a tightly scripted show, but visually, it celebrated looseness and spontaneity.