Simon Lewis from the The Irish Mail On Sunday on September 23, 2007, comments on the Mayweather Hatton Showdown

Quite what the American public will make of an up-close and personal look at life behind the scenes with Ricky Hatton is anyone’s guess, but it is safe to say the view will be in stark contrast to that of Floyd ‘Money’ Mayweather Jr.

 Such is the interest in the December 8 welterweight showdown in Las Vegas between these two undefeated boxers from opposing sides of the Atlantic that the 15,000 tickets for the bout at the MGM Grand Hotel sold out in less than half an hour while a further 10,000 seats to watch the fight on close circuit television in the city were snapped up inside an hour.  

In short, the fight is in little need of hyperbole, pitting as it does, Manchester ’s Hatton, the Ring Magazine’s light-welterweight champion of the world with a 43-0 record, against America ’s Mayweather, similarly undisputed champion at welterweight with a 38-0 record and widely regarded as the best pound-for-pound pugilist on the planet.  

Yet there is always an angle and in this case it is pay-per-view sales. With the fight being shown by HBO in the United States and Sky Sports in Hatton’s backyard, there are still potentially millions of people to be reached in the next 10 weeks and the American network is hoping a four-part reality show focusing on Hatton and Mayweather’s big-fight preparations will help turn the fight into a PPV record-breaker.

 HBO have a yardstick of 2.15 million pay-per-view buys and $120 million in PPV revenue that they achieved in May when Mayweather beat Oscar De La Hoya. Not only did that easily outstrip the previous record for a non-heavyweight fight of 1.4m buys, set by De La Hoya and Felix Trinidad in 1999 but it also eclipsed the overall record of 1.99m buys set in 1997 for the second meeting of Evander Holyfield and Mike Tyson.

And the revenue from Mayweather/De La Hoya also topped the previous record of $112m achieved from the Tyson-Lennox Lewis showdown in 2002.

HBO executives believe that their Mayweather/De La Hoya 24/7 reality programme showed the way for future megafights, establishing a new model for promoting an event although experts warned it needed the right ingredients from the fighters.

 “That fight may very well have redefined the opportunities available to promote and market a marquee sporting event,” David Carter, executive director of the University of Southern California’s Sports Business Institute, told this writer earlier this summer. “But, to be fair, there will not be many that offer the compelling combination that this bout offered; the athletes, their records, the relative lack of personalities and talent in the other weight classifications, and so on, all created to this special marketing platform."

With Mayweather offering a constant, HBO now think Hatton offers a compelling variable, although if the video put out by Team Hatton this week, mocking Mayweather's upcoming appearance on ABC’s "Dancing with the Stars," competition is anything to go by, the slick Americans will have got more than they bargained for from the Mancunian and his entourage.

In the video stunt, Hatton invites an effeminate dance instructor character called Bruto Schlong, into a boxing gym for salsa lessons.

"The girlie should go back! The girlie should go back!" squeals Schlong who then receives a knockout punch from Hatton that sends him to the canvas and has Team Hatton in hysterics.

Hatton showed it to a bemused gathering of New York media during an open-air press conference at Manhattan’s Rockefeller Center on Wednesday as the rivals continued a five-city promotion tour that took in Los Angeles on Monday, Mayweather’s hometown of Grand Rapids, Michigan, on Tuesday and continued on to London on Thursday before winding up in Manchester two days ago.

 And while the video may have missed the mark in Gotham , the British fighter’s charm out of the ring more than compensated when he sat down with a cabal of boxing writers before the main PR event got under way.  

In Mayweather’s previous fight, the 24/7 program contrasted the 43-0 fighter’s blinged-up braggadocio and conspicuous displays of wealth and celebrity at his Vegas mansion with De La Hoya’s unassuming, familial existence at training camp in Puerto Rico.   

 With Hatton it will be like putting the rapper 50 Cent on stage with George Formby.

 Hatton plays the archetypal British cheeky chappy to a tee, cracking one-liners to the delight of those around him in New York this week, playing up his famed periods of downtime between fights when he likes nothing more than to drink pints of Guinness with his mates and play darts for his local.

 When asked about his preference for the tune Blue Moon as his entrance theme he politely tells them of his love for Manchester City and even more politely explains how different they are from the red half of his hometown.

Much like he and Mayweather, who counts 50 Cent as a friend and recently appeared with him during a concert in Vegas at which he delighted in tossing cash, “Loadsamoney” style, into the watching crowd.

 That is anathema to Hatton, whose barely disguised his contempt for an act he described as “belittling people”.

The Mancunian said the promotional tour with his rival had opened his eyes to the real Mayweather and told reporters that his time on the road with the fast-talking American had been like “spending a day with a six-year-old”.

"I just think nobody sees the real Floyd Mayweather," Hatton said. "When we're out here, this is all about publicizing a fight, and it's about putting bums in seats, and sometimes you've got to act like Floyd acts in order to do that.

"But I've met him a couple of times since we've been here, quiet moments, when there were no cameras there, and he still seems to be the same, you know? So there's one thing about publicizing the fight, and there's another thing with having a total lack of respect."

Like every cheeky chappy and class clown, Hatton most of all wants to be loved. He has that love in Britain , where 33,000 of his fans tried to get hold of 3,900 tickets for their hero’s date with destiny in Vegas. And 15,000 have still booked flights and hotel rooms to be there regardless.

Winning love from American fight fans may well follow but getting respect from Mayweather may prove a bridge too far.

“We're just very, very different people," Hatton said. "I'm not saying he should change what he's doing, but if I could give him a bit of advice, I'd say mix the publicising with a little bit of respect along the way, because I haven't seen it yet.

"I've met him in public, obviously this week and one other occasion, and he's given me no respect, whatsoever. I don't know, deep down, whether he does have a bit of respect for me. I can't answer that. You always got opponents who say, 'I'm going to beat you, I'm going to knock you out, I'm going to do this,' but there's sort of like a little bit of respect there. I haven't quite seen it.”