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And in this corner ...
The champion, Evander Holyfield, supremely confident he will be the one left standing.
"It wasn't that boxing had appeal," Holyfield says in a lengthy interview, taking a break before next Saturday's heavyweight unification title bout against Lennox Lewis. "But it was the only sport that didn't have nothing to do with a coach deciding what you could do. There was always something about coaching I didn't like.
"Every time I played for a coach, they kept telling me what I couldn't do. In boxing, you had a coach -- and he gave you some direction -- but he couldn't decide how long you play or what position or anything like that. In boxing, you made weight and they sent you out to fight. The rest was up to you."
Holyfield carries the past around with him, like another muscle on his chiselled frame, a significant part of the real heavyweight champion of the world. He carries the past around: The coaches who said he couldn't do it, the people who told him he couldn't be a heavyweight, the obstacles he always has managed to overcome.
"You want to know the truth?" Holyfield says. "When I started boxing, I was kind of scared but nobody knew that. I didn't want anybody to know. I discovered very early in boxing that if I hit him first, he starts crying. So the best thing to do is hit him first. I don't really like boxing, but it has worked for me.
"You know, too much of life is up to someone else. You're too small, you can't perform, everybody always telling you stuff. Boxing hasn't been like that for me. What matters is what you do and how you do it."
He sits in a room wearing blue jeans, sneakers and a T-shirt. There is little pretentious or presumptuous about the heavyweight champion after all his victories, the many millions he has soaked from a sport that usually eats its champions. He sits patiently, politely, answering everything, going back in time the way he likes to go back, to the days when he was a poor kid in Atlanta, selling popcorn and soft drinks at Fulton County Stadium.
"I used to make $1.05 for every rack of Coca-Cola I sold," Holyfield says with a wide smile. "And I'd usually sell about 20 of them a game. That gave me about about $20 for the week. That was the only money I ever had. It was enough."
Instead of $20, Holyfield will earn $20 million for the fight against Lennox Lewis, the 40th professional fight of a startling career. He has lost only three times: Twice to Riddick Bowe, once to Michael Moorer. He came back to beat both of them, and then he beat Mike Tyson twice, beat George Foreman and Larry Holmes. The resume of Holyfield is almost a history of the past two decades of heavyweight champions.
This is the great advantage he will carry into Madison Square Garden against Lewis, who only has been beaten once. There were no Bowe fights for Lewis since turning professional, there were no Tyson fights, no Foreman fights. Few wars.
"It's funny," says Holyfield, not laughing. "People thought Tyson was the best and they said to me, 'Why are you fighting Tyson? You're going to get killed.' People thought Bowe was the best and Foreman was the best, but at the end you have just two people standing there and only one knows what the truth is.
"The guy left standing at the end will be the best. The guy left standing."
Boxing never has consumed Holyfield. What has? Winning. Finding out about himself. Finding ways to win.
He trains unlike any heavyweight in recent memory. There is little ever left to chance.
And he watches film, unlike other boxers. He doesn't concentrate so much on his opponent -- he lets his trainers do that. He watches himself, studies himself.
"How can I beat me?" he says. "I think, 'If I'm fighting me, how would I exploit my weaknesses?' I'm always watching my films thinking, `If he does this, I'm going to do that.' I know someone can outfight me, that's possible, but I don't know anyone who can outwork me or out-think me in the ring."
THINKER
It was Holyfield's ability to out-think and outsmart Tyson that led to two victories, that so frustrated and angered Tyson that it led to a piece of Holyfield's ear being bitten off in one of the most bizarre occurrences in a very bizarre game. Holyfield leans and shows the ear now, a gnarled symbol of his willpower and his fortitude.
"The first thing I wanted to do was bite him back," he says.
"In fact, I started to. Then I composed myself. But I wanted to bite him.
"After that first Tyson fight, everybody said, Why not quit? That's the best you'll ever be.' Then there was the second Tyson fight and everybody said, 'Why do you keep going?'
"Now, here's a guy (Lewis) I haven't fought. There's a challenge out there for me. Another fight for me to win ... You know how it is. It's the guy left standing, and I'm going to be that guy."