Let Joe have a civil war to take on Hopkins in Las Vegas

Tom Jones, though, can oil his larynx because Calzaghe's camp successfully argued in favour of retaining the sacred gladiatorial tradition.

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But, in an especially political transatlantic clash, billed with all the hyperbole Las Vegas can muster as the 'Battle of the Planet', the possible effect on referee Joe Cortez of another round of cringe-inducing heckling has added to the sense that Calzaghe will have to comprehensively outbox Hopkins to win their $10million face-off.

To appreciate the culture shock of the jeering before the Hatton- Mayweather fight, you needed to be in the arena to record the ear-piercing volume of the boos and whistles and see the disgust that crept into Cortez's eyes.

Hatton said: 'I saw Joe Cortez's face and he didn't like it. If you're an American judge or referee, you would get the hump if your national anthem was booed.'

In his misery and wooziness, Hatton groped for all sorts of explanations for his brutal defeat by the mesmerising Mayweather. The simplest and most accurate was that he parted the ropes with a crude strategy and was savagely outclassed.

But down the ages, the smartest foreign fighters have come to the Nevada desert careful not to complicate an already daunting task. The dumbest move in the textbook is to harden local opinion against you where it really counts — on the scorecards of local judges.

Calzaghe's promoter Frank Warren likens a British fighter's willingness to risk his reputation in these parts to Manchester United volunteering to face Barcelona in the Nou Camp in a one-leg knock-out game.

Warren has urged the expected 4,000 British visitors to 'respect' America's anthem and Calzaghe adds: 'I was in the arena (for Hatton-Mayweather) and there were a lot of Britons who, like me, were disgusted.'

Not turning the 18,776-seat Thomas and Mack Centre into England v Scotland at Wembley is only the first step on the road to a rare British victory in an American ring. Hopkins is a clever possum and counter-attacker of 20 years' standing, and he also happens to be vice-president of Golden Boy Promotions, the American impresarios behind Calzaghe's first U.S. fight.

One day, 'The Executioner' is to be seen in a suit on a dais extolling the sponsorship virtues of Tecate beer. The next, he is back in street-fighter mode, promising an apocalypse on pay-per-view.

In his double guise as smooth exec and ghetto warrior, Hopkins connects two worlds that were considered unbridgeable in the days when promoters promoted and fighters merely fought.

Don't run too far, however, with the boxer empowerment idea. In last year's record-breaking Oscar De La Hoya-Mayweather fight, De La Hoya's Golden Boy were also the promoters, which gave one of the protagonists a huge financial stake in the outcome and any potential rematches.

No suggestion of impropriety is intended, but it's not hard to see how political power accumulates in one corner, however scrupulous the judges and the referee.

In Calzaghe's favour is the knowledge that Hopkins has objected three times to Cortez refereeing his fights and succeeded in having him removed before his famous triumph over Felix Trinidad in 2001. As Hatton learned, Cortez is a disciplinarian and unlikely to tolerate the 43-year- old Hopkins' more desperate age-evading tactics.

By contrast, Calzaghe has fond memories of Saturday night's official. Cortez oversaw the start of the Welshman's 11-year-reign as world super-middleweight champion when he conquered Chris Eubank in October 1997.

Incredibly, Calzaghe's 44-fight, 15-season pro career has taken him outside Britain only twice, to Denmark in 2001 and Germany four years later. Even for his biggest assignments, against Jeff Lacy (in Manchester) and Mikkel Kessler (Cardiff), there was no time-zone or climate change, no exile to a suburban Las Vegas house and not the same ceaseless round of promotional demands.

Even those of us who are convinced Calzaghe will send Hopkins back to the Golden Boy boardroom empty-fisted (apart from the $5million, of course) are obliged to admit the American can claim a sharper knowledge of the points-scoring ethos in Las Vegas rings. He knows the mentality of judging far better than his Welsh guest.

For all these reasons, it would serve the interests of both politics and civility if Calzaghe's supporters avoided the Hatton- Mayweather trap of treating an American auditorium like an Ayia Napa pub.