Dave Allen v Thomas Carty: All dressed up with very different places to go
They enter the ring on Saturday
There was something almost fitting about the way Dave Allen and Thomas Carty turned up for their final press conference in Dublin.
Carty arrived looking the part. Smart jacket, shirt and tie; the attire of a man who knows he is approaching the biggest night of his career and wants to savour every last detail of it.
Allen looked rather more like a man who had wandered in off the street.
And, listening to them speak, the difference in their mindsets was every bit as stark.
South Yorkshire's Allen has been a professional for 15 years. This will be his 39th fight. He has been through the big nights, the hard nights and, most significantly, the sort of defeat that can alter a fighter's relationship with the sport.
After his loss to Filip Hrgovic, Allen admitted: "the feeling left me really for boxing."
There is no attempt to disguise what motivates him now. He isn't chasing a title. He isn't trying to resurrect a career. There is no grand plan beyond Saturday night.
"I’m just here to have a fight" he offered, with typical nonchalance.
Yet there was a curious contradiction in Allen's apparent lack of ambition. Because while he insists he has little left to prove, he remains utterly convinced that he is a nightmare for anyone operating at this level.
“If you’re not Hrgovic, I’ll take some beating,” he said.
And then came the bluntest of warnings to Carty: “If you're not very good I'll f*****g flatten you, I always have.”
That is Allen's world now. No promises of championships. No talk of legacy. Just the uncomplicated pleasure - or perhaps compulsion - of finding out who is the better man when the bell rings.
The smartly-attired Carty, meanwhile, could hardly be in a different place.
This isn't simply another fight to him. It is the bout he remembers imagining might happen one day. He grew up watching Allen. Now, at Croke Park, he gets the opportunity to share a Matchroom ring with him.
"I couldn’t have done anymore" Carty said. "I did everything that I could in this camp. I’m in a really, really good position right now,” he said. "This is going to be my best fight on Saturday night, absolutely."
It was quite a difference.
Allen, who deliberately turned up late to the pre-fight promotion, sounds like a man with nothing left to prove.
Carty sounds like a man who believes Saturday night is his chance to prove everything.
But Allen is a wily old fox. Perhaps the casual clothes, the day-late arrival and the air of a man simply turning up for a punch-up were all part of the disguise.
Because there is one thing Allen has never lacked, even when the motivation has waned: belief in his ability to hurt people.