In the red corner stands an over-weight, Guinness-guzzling, bar-room brawler.
In the blue corner is a track-meet contender who would win a gold medal if ever running backwards became an Olympic sport.
Welcome to the anti-hype, as Ricky Hatton and Floyd Mayweather spend their final two weeks of preparations apparently trying to convince anyone who will still listen to eschew pay-per-view and keep their TV sets turned off.
It hasn't worked.
More than 10,000 fans will still travel across the Atlantic, more than half in the knowledge that they have no chance in hell of securing a ticket to watch the fight live.
The MGM Grand Garden Arena sold out within half-an-hour of tickets going on sale for a fight which pits the brash, trash-talking, all-American glamour boy with the down-to-earth Mancunian with a fondness for pies and pints.
Their big fight will be prefaced by a series following both fighters through final preparations and probably serving to underline the diametrically opposed lifestyles which the two combatants lead.
It will, perhaps, compare Mayweather's garage - including a Ferrari 360 Spider and a Rolls Royce Phantom - with Hatton's fondness for the Robin Reliant of 'Trotters Independent Trading' fame, for which he paid £4,000 in 2004.
It will provide the sort of reality TV story which Americans crave, and possibly throw open the highly-anticipated contest to millions who would not normally be attracted to the sport.
But it is not just outside the ring where Mayweather and Hatton lead fundamentally different lives.
Inside, as the anti-hype will have you believe, it is all about whether the matador can hold off the bull.
Such a cliched conclusion is unfair on two counts.
Mayweather was hardly roller-skating out of the arena on the night he decked the late, great former lightweight champion Diego Corrales five times.
Nor was he running scared when he moved up to the light-middleweight division in his last fight to see off the naturally much bigger Oscar De La Hoya and claim a world title at a fifth weight.
Likewise, Hatton has hardly got where he is today by simply elbowing his way forward unintelligently. In fact, his footwork, hand-speed and split-second shot selection are a match for any of the silky skills Mayweather can offer.
Nazim Richardson - the trainer of Bernard Hopkins, who provided Hatton's sparring partners for the Mayweather fight and spent a number of weeks in Manchester - spoke eloquently of the importance of guile to match undoubted guts.
"Ricky knows that coming forward and putting on the pressure is not going to be enough," he said.
"Ricky is much quicker and cleverer than people give him credit for. He is not just going to be walking forward.
"I think it will be a rough fight. Ricky has the ability to turn the fight into a dogfight, and that is where his chances lie. His chances lie with being strategic within that dogfight, because Mayweather won't relish that ruggedness.
"But Mayweather is so intelligent. The bottom line is, gorillas are stronger than man but you haven't seen anywhere except in the movies where the gorillas are walking around and man is in the cages.
"We handle gorillas; we handle wild boars; we handle anything that is strong and rugged that doesn't have any intellect with it. But Ricky Hatton is more than that. He is more than a Carlos Baldomir kind of fighter.
"Ricky beating Mayweather would not be a shock. If Ricky can cope with the power and strategy Kostya Tszyu brought, he can cope with Mayweather. If he can impose his will, Ricky can win this fight."
It is that innate intelligence in his work, rather than any kind of blood-and-thunder brawling, which has lifted Hatton from a Manchester council estate to the blazing neon billboards of Las Vegas.It is what made his toughest fight to date, against the ferocious Mexican Jose Luis Castillo, a cake-walk last time out - when he picked a crushing liver shot to count out his big-name opponent in round four.
It may not have possessed the theatre of a sweeping left hook to the chin - but it was by far the best punch of Hatton's career, and one which suggests he possesses a power advantage against Mayweather.
How good is the Grand Rapids man?
World titles at five different weights tell their own story. But almost all of victories came against fighters whom Hatton also would have expected to beat.
There was a weight-drained Diego Corrales, an inconsistent Zab Judah, the past-it pair of Sharmba Mitchell and Arturo Gatti.
Mayweather scraped home in his first fight against Castillo - the closest he has yet come to Hatton's brand of educated pressure.
He eased to the world welterweight title by winning every round against the one-dimensional Baldomir, and picked off De La Hoya - who lacked the relentless momentum required to sufficiently unsettle his rival.
During their many promotional dates, Mayweather has already discovered he has met nobody quite like Hatton - who responds to the American jibes by simply pouring more self-deprecatory comments upon himself.
On December 8, Mayweather will quickly realise he has never been inside the ropes with anybody like Hatton either. From that unfamiliarity grows the very real possibility of the greatest night in British boxing history taking shape.
More news from SportingLife.com
