Ricky Hatton, fresh off a revivifying victory over Paulie Malignaggi in Las Vegas and a rollicking tour of Mexico with Oasis, will be back in Vegas next weekend to witness a $100m prize fight which has been marketed by promoters as boxing’s ‘Dream Match’. Some critics see it more like a “gold-plated mismatch”, even a “circus act”.

Oscar De La Hoya, America’s Golden Boy, enjoys overwhelming advantages in weight, height and reach over Filipino Manny Pacquiao, whom the majority of experts rate as the world’s best boxer, pound-for-pound, over Joe Calzaghe. The 35-year-old veteran once challenged Bernard Hopkins for the world middleweight (11st 6lb) title. Pacquiao, 29, began his career as a light flyweight, weighing 7st 8lb, and he was knocked out twice at flyweight (8st). Hatton, world champion at light welterweight (10st), is in line to meet the winner next May at Wembley or Cardiff’s Millennium Stadium. “With my performance against Malignaggi, I’ve put myself firmly in the frame, so I’m waiting to see what happens on December 6,” said the 30-year-old Mancunian, though his ‘weight-ing game’ could be dangerous in the end, as it may prove to be for Pacquiao.

An icon in the Philippines – so much so that rebel and government forces hold steadfast to a temporary ceasefire whenever he boxes – Pacquiao’s fiercely aggressive style and a determination which he honed while homeless on the streets of Manila have secured for him world title belts in four weight divisions, flyweight, super bantamweight (8st 10lb), super featherweight (9st 4lb) and lightweight (9st 9lb). De La Hoya, too, has risen through the weights, garnering world title belts at super featherweight, lightweight, light welterweight, welterweight (10st 7lb), light middleweight (11st) and middleweight. But throughout their respective careers the weight differential between De La Hoya and Pacquiao has been significant, in the range of 27 lb to 34 lb for most of the past 13 years (De La Hoya turned pro in 1992 after winning a gold medal at the Barcelona Olympics and Pacquaio in 1995).

They will encounter one another at welterweight, even though De La Hoya has not made the 10st 7lb limit for any of his bouts since 2001 and Pacquiao has boxed only once at lightweight when he knocked out fellow southpaw David Diaz in June. Weight will not be the Filipino’s only disadvantage, for at 5ft 10½in De La Hoya is 4in taller and his reach is 73in to Pacquiao’s 67in. “Manny is just too small and Oscar is just too big,” declared Paul Williams, a 6ft 1in American who World Boxing Organisation (WBO) welterweight titleholder until he vacated the title this year to step up to light middleweight. “That’s why we have different weight classes.”

Thomas Hauser, the award-winning writer who worked with Muhammad Ali on His Life and Times, summed up the match in a column for ESPN.com. “De La Hoya is the size of an average man, Pacquiao started his career 21lb below weight for a jockey in the Kentucky Derby but, ultimately, curiosity and marketing will sell De La Hoya-Pacquiao,” Hauser wrote. “Manny’s skill and determination will salvage it as entertainment. But the matchup will be competitive only if Oscar has nothing left as a fighter. Boxing’s Golden Boy might not be able to pull the trigger like he used to but he isn’t so far gone that he can’t beat an opponent whose natural weight is 20 to 30lb less than his own.”

If De La Hoya wins – the bookies make him a 4/11 odds-on favourite with Pacquiao 2/1 - Golden Boy Promotions, which the entrepreneurial boxer runs alongside Richard Schaefer, will move quickly to make De La Hoya-Hatton. This, too, would be a welterweight match, forcing Hatton to give up his own advantages in physical strength at light welterweight, to face a fighter who has stopped 10 of the 21 men against whom he has competed at 10st 7lb and above. How significant can these weighty matters be? In Hatton’s only previous contests as a welterweight he was brought to the precipice of defeat by Luis Collazo in 2006 and Floyd Mayweather Jr inflicted his only loss against 45 wins by stopping him in the 10th round. “There’s just a huge difference in size between myself and Oscar and on the two occasions that I have moved up to welterweight I think it’s been proved that it’s not my weight,” Hatton told me at the end of August.

But money talks and, for a purse which might escalate towards £20m, Hatton has since determined that the rewards might justify the risk of taking the punches of a bigger man – 3in in height, 8in in reach and by as much as 20lb over the past four years. “There are a lot of good fighters in the light welterweight division now but, as good as [WBO titleholder] Kendall Holt and Timothy Bradley [who holds the World Boxing Council (WBC) title] are, they’re not the household names that Manny Pacquiao and Oscar de la Hoya are,” Hatton said after last weekend’s 11th round stoppage of Malignaggi. “If I’m going to have a couple of years left, what sort of a champion would I be if I turned my back on fighting Oscar or Manny?”

Of course, boxing history does not discriminate entirely against the smaller man. Henry Armstrong simultaneously held world titles from featherweight (9st) to welterweight in the 1930s and in the 1970s and ’80s Roberto Duran became boxing’s first four-weight world champion (lightweight, welterweight, light middleweight and middleweight), a feat which Thomas Hearns and Sugar Ray Leonard surpassed when they won belts in all five divisions from welterweight to light heavyweight (12st 7lb). Roy Jones gave away 33lb to John Ruiz when he successfully challenged for the World Boxing Association (WBA) heavyweight title in 2003 to become the only other boxer besides Bob Fitzsimmons to hold world titles at middleweight, light heavyweight and heavyweight. But the carcasses of small men wiped out by bigger men lie prone in such numbers across the canvas of the ring that to ignore the old axiom – a good big ’un will always beat a good little ’un – could be foolhardy.

Pacquiao’s trainer, Freddie Roach, with whom Amir Khan has been rebuilding his career since his first-round knockout defeat by Breidis Prescott in September, is convinced that De La Hoya is now a part-time fighter, vulnerable to the kind of ferocity which has been Pacquiao’s hallmark in 47 wins, 35 by stoppage, against three defeats and two draws. “When I trained Oscar for his fight last year against Floyd Mayweather Jr we only had two good days on the mitts but, with Manny Pacquiao, we have good mitts sessions every day,” Roach declared. “Oscar can’t pull the trigger any more. He doesn’t have the explosion of Manny Pacquiao. He doesn’t have that pop. Pacquiao will inflict a lot of damage on Oscar. If Steve Forbes [against whom De La Hoya went the distance in a warm-up fight in May] can hit him as easily as he did, Manny can do a lot more damage, believe me.”

The De La Hoya camp sees things differently. “Oscar will knock Pacquiao out in a rather brutal fashion,” predicted Schaefer, a former Swiss banker whose money, in another conflict waged recently, was on Russia over Georgia.

De La Hoya v Pacquiao is live on Sky Box Office on Saturday, December 6 as part of ‘Judgement Night’, which also includes Amir Khan v Oisin Fagan. To order the night of live boxing call: 08442 410 888