AMERICA AT LARGE:  For over a quarter-century they have jostled for position on the centre stage of the boxing business, and, while their relationship has been for the most part acrimonious, the two bitter rivals have occasionally banded together in a spirit of co-operation when it suited their mutual economic interests.

Bob Arum is a Talmudic scholar who took his law degree at Harvard; Don King graduated cum laude from the School of Hard Knocks. Arum worked as an Assistant US Attorney in Robert F Kennedy's Justice Department, while King studied for his second career in the penitentiary after stomping a rival Cleveland numbers runner to death in the street.

The world's two most prominent boxing promoters find themselves squaring off again this week in a Florida courtroom, and the proceedings are being watched with some bemusement around the boxing world. At issue is Arum's alleged 1998 theft of the Mexican pugilist Julio Cesar Chavez.

Although Chavez was a world champion in three weight classes and may have been one of the greatest fighters to don gloves, he wasn't worth much by 1998 and he is worth a lot less than that now. The joke running around among the fight mob is that whichever promoter loses the court case will have to take the 40-year-old Chavez, who has lost three of his last seven fights. Chavez, who hasn't fought in over a year, has a remarkable career record of 104-5-2, which isn't bad unless one takes into account the fact he was at one time 85-0.

Early in 1998, in Mexico City, Chavez drew with countryman Miguel Angel Gonzalez on a King-promoted card, but was never paid his purse. (King claims he had advanced $3 million to the boxer to pay off debts.) Arum signed Chavez to a contract a month later and featured him on two cards, including a loss in a rematch with Oscar De La Hoya. Chavez later re-signed with King, but the lawsuit went forward anyway, finally going to trial late last week.

Arum's lawyers claim the promoter was unaware Chavez had renewed his contract with King a year earlier. King maintains the temporary loss of Chavez's services cost him $14 million, a figure Arum's lawyers dismissed as "astronomical".

Almost laughably, a significant portion of the sum King is demanding would compensate him for damage to his "reputation", although as Arum pointed out yesterday King's repute had taken an even bigger hit six weeks before the Chavez business came into play - when Mike Tyson filed suit against King, charging the promoter with bilking him out of $100 million. (That litigation is next on King's dance card.) King's position is that if Arum didn't know he was "stealing" a fighter he had under contract, he should have.

"He knew I had an exclusive promotional agreement," testified King, who said it had happened enough times to form a pattern. "Every time he tampered with this fighter, he found out that the fighter had lied to him. It just repeated one after another," said King, who suggested Chavez's actions may have been clouded by drug and alcohol problems.

The Mexican boxer "was under a traumatic type of feeling because he knew he had done wrong by submitting to temptations", said the self-styled World's Greatest Promoter.

And on the witness stand on Tuesday, Arum suggested that the 1997 contract submitted by King may have been a forgery.

If King seems to have momentarily taken his eye off the ball when all of this took place, it is understandable that he might have been distracted. During the period Chavez was bouncing back and forth between the two promoters, King was on trial in a federal courtroom in New York, charged with wire fraud and racketeering in a case which ironically stemmed from another Chavez fight. (King was ultimately acquitted.)

THE most amusing moment to date in the proceedings at hand came the other day when, from the witness stand, King labelled Chavez's manager Alberto Gonzalez "a drug dealer". Arum's attorneys immediately demanded that the judge declare a mistrial, and the jury was led out of the courtroom while the judge considered the motion.

King, claiming to have been "misunderstood", started to protest his innocence: "I thought I said . . ." At that point a red-faced Arum broke in to shout "Well, you didn't, dammit!" We're making it even money this trial can proceed to a conclusion without either Arum or King or both being cited for contempt before it is over.

The pair have been arch-rivals for 28 years, but the war has been interrupted when a beneficial alliance seemed in order. They co-promoted the 1975 "Thrilla in Manila" which concluded the Muhammad Ali-Joe Frazier trilogy. They were brought together by Sugar Ray Leonard's attorney Mike Trainer to stage Leonard's 1980 fight against Roberto Duran in Montreal, and shared lesser roles in the epic Leonard-Tommy Hearns fight in Las Vegas a year later.

A decade ago they co-promoted a card featuring both Mike Tyson and George Foreman which was supposed to pave the way for a meeting of the two former heavyweight champions, and in 1999 they worked together to promote the Felix Trinidad-De La Hoya clash for the undisputed welterweight title. Otherwise, they have been at one another's throats.

Fifteen years ago we witnessed one memorable moment, when, at the conclusion of Leonard's middleweight championship fight against Marvellous Marvin Hagler, King attempted to climb into the ring at Caesars Palace as the verdict was announced. King was not involved in the promotion but could not restrain himself from displaying his delight that Hagler, Arum's fighter, had lost.

Before King could get through the ropes, Arum leapt on his back. The mild-mannered lawyer managed to rip the pocket off King's coat as he tried to pull him down from the ring. A Caesars security guard escorted King from the ring firmly enough that the promoter was moved to call him "a lousy no good black motherfucker". Before the Trinidad-De La Hoya fight, Arum discussed his old rival and momentary partner.

"King is a very, very good salesman, and he can con more businessmen into stupid deals than anybody I've ever seen. I think he is one of the greatest salesmen that I have ever encountered, and I don't say that in a pejorative way," said Arum.

"Las Vegas hotels, major corporations, and even whole countries have been burned by this guy because he is such a good salesman," marvelled Arum.

"I guess we are always in the courtroom suing each other," said King the same week. "Arum is Arum. I have learned to live with Arum, not to character-assassinate him. He does a wonderful job of that himself."