SOMETHING in the region of 2lb will divide Steve Collins and Nigel Benn when they step into the ring at the Nynex arena tonight in Manchester. When a rather farcical weigh in took place in the YMCA club, just after six o'clock yesterday evening the scales revealed that there was very little between the two boxers as far as their weight was concerned with both coming in marginally within the 12 stone limit.

Benn was first to the scales and he was weighed in at 11 stone 13lb and 8oz. When Collins came to the scales, however, there was some doubt about what was going on in a crowded situation and after he had visited the scales and stepped down he was finally weighed in at 11 stone 11lbs and 12oz.

Up until a late hour last night Collins's younger brother Pascal was unsure as to whether or not he would be allowed to box on tonight's bill.

IF talking were the criterion by which these matters were decided, tonight's World Boxing Organisation super middleweight title fight between the holder Steve Collins and the challenger Nigel Benn would most certainly be a draw.

Within the last 24 hours both boxers have been quite extraordinarily co operative as far as the Irish print media is concerned.

Collins made himself available to myself and my colleagues on Thursday and yesterday, to our enormous surprise, Nigel Benn, whom we had previously regarded as a rather arrogant, even dismissive and definitely tigerish man, invited us into his plush suite in the Mottram Hall Hotel and proceeded to charm everybody in sight.

The palatial surroundings exuded wealth, so it was appropriate that the boxer alluded to the fact that such trappings no longer attracted him.

This was identical to the impression that Collins gave us when he met us less than 24 hours earlier. Then, he had told us that wife, family and friends were more important than the extraordinary hype which attends a sportsman nowadays. Coming from Collins, a decent working class Dub, it wasn't very difficult to accept such sentiments as authentic. Coming from Benn, however, things appeared to us to be different and it was with some trepidation that we went to meet him.

It was with some surprise that we left his suite of rooms after an hour and a half of quite amazing grace and watched him throw his arms around Brendan Mooney of The Examiner and thank him for coming.

Earlier he had told us that given the fact that he now had enough money to be able to describe himself as a wealthy man, he had no problems in regard to his future.

"I have as many toys as I need - big cars, a big mansion, the taxman is not interested in me. I've got it all. I just want to lie back and enjoy myself and my friends and not have anything to worry about for the rest of my life.

"I will go into Saturday night's fight and I don't believe that I am in any way diminished by that situation. I have great respect for Steve Collins. He came up the hard way and he is a very good fighter, but I believe that I am better than he is and I am not making any predictions about the outcome of the fight other than the fact that I am going to win."

He refused to suggest how the fight might end.

"I am determined that I am going to win. I don't know how Steve is going to fight. I don't know whether he is going to come forward or run me around the ring, but I am prepared for every attitude that he takes and I have no doubt in my mind about the outcome," he said.

This was more or less identical to what Steve Collins had said the previous day, with the same level of honest conviction.

With so little to go on, it is choice, rather than detail, that will dictate analysts's predictions of the way this fight will go.

From the perspective of this observer, it would appear that as Benn has absolutely nothing to lose and Collins has a considerable amount to lose, the event might turn in Collins' favour. He still has to deal with a number of "outside the ring" matters, which may very well leave him a good deal short of the amount of money that Nigel Benn has confirmed that he now possesses.

Collins, a very determined young man, has experienced legal action with a number of former associates, notably the Petronelli brothers from Boston and Barry Hearn from London.

This week, he told us that these matters were all going in his favour, but then he would, wouldn't he? He has established himself in a training camp in Jersey near St Brelad's Bay and admits that he misses his wife, Gemma, and his children, who are in Dublin.

But, to try and make an assessment of tonight's fight, it would seem that Collins has more to win and much more to lose than Benn. A defeat for Collins at this stage would not impoverish him, nor would it interfere with his innate decency as both a boxer and a man, but he does not have the same amount of financial resources stashed away and that might, in the long run, be the decisive factor.

Collins has things to prove. He has roads to travel. Benn seems to have accepted the fact that he is at the end of whatever road he set out upon, that he has achieved his goal and that he would not be all that miffed or disappointed in defeat.

Although a defeat for him would not be the end of the road either, Collins would suffer more.

The truth of the matter is that, in this particular division of boxing, Benn and Chris Eubank are much bigger drawing cards for the TV cameras. Collins, for all his decent workmanship, has not attracted the same level of excitement to the ringside. Defeat for him - with Benn as champion - could very well be the end of his career as a realistic titleholder.

That is why the determination needed for a fight of this nature would appear to be more readily available in Collins than in Benn. That is why the likelihood is that Collins will remain world champion at the end of Saturday night and that is why people are thronging into Manchester from all parts of Britain and Ireland to the extent that the 20,000 Nynex stadium will be sold out - for a fight which will surely become a part of Irish boxing folklore.