Manchester native Brendan Loughnane and Scot Stevie Ray are aiming to become millionaires on Friday night as they go for gold at the PFL Championships in New York City.
Loughnane is a slight favourite to win the featherweight title, but faces a tough test in Bubba Jenkins. Meanwhile Ray is a hefty underdog when he faces Olivier Aubin-Mercier, the Canadian lightweight who is considering retirement if he can pocket the life-changing $1million prize for this weekend's tournament.
Ultimately, six title fights will take part at the Hulu Theater in famed fight venue Madison Square Garden, with all of the winners pocketing seven figures with a win. And the UK could have two champions returning home next week should Ray and Loughnane both manage to pick up victories.
The Manchester native, who classes Tyson Fury amongst his friends, is planning to become the first major MMA champion from the area since Michael Bisping. Meanwhile, Fife's Ray would be Scotland's first representative to take such honours on a massive stage like PFL, who are deemed by some including CEO Peter Murray to be the No.2 promotion in the sport.
"There's something special about this fight," Ray's opponent Aubin-Mercier told the media at Wednesday's press conference at the Manhattan Center. "I'm always going 100 per cent, for sure, but it's probably the biggest fight of my career. I see this one as my last fight.
"But I could see next year myself waking up and saying 'f***, my life is useless,' and then I'll probably come back. That's probably like 90 per cent of fighters, actually. Let's see what happens."
There's no real bad blood between either of the fighters, with Ray and Aubin-Mercier even having sparred together in the past. They trained together at Tristar in Canada, but both aren't making much of the exchanges given that they were four years ago and both men have moved on significantly as athletes in the meantime.
"We trained together, the last time would have been four years ago," Ray added. "I've been to Tristar a few times so we've done a little bit of work together, not too much. We've rolled together, done a couple of sparring sessions but I wouldn't say there's been anything to take from it, anything we've done in sparring you'd see watching the other person's fights anyway.
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"You can see watching him what kind of fighter he is, what his strengths are and his weaknesses and then obviously training together we see that as well. I wouldn't say we've done too much together and the last time would have been over four years ago so not too much happened.
"I'm not sure how he feels, but that's the fight game. Sometimes you have to fight people you've trained with, sometimes you have to fight your friends. But when there's $1m on the line it doesn't matter who's in front of me I'm going to have to try and knock them out."
The relationship between Loughnane and Jenkins isn't quite as deep, but the pair have appeared friendly throughout the build-up to this weekend's fight. It's a far cry from the verbal battles that the Brit underwent with his last opponent Chris Wade, and they are both simply putting their cordial relationship aside for the sake of battle with a seven-figure prize.
"I've been fighting quite a long time, since 2008," Loughnane explained. "I've fought friends, I've fought people I hate, I've fought good competitors, bad competitors, you name it. Actually, I was on The Ultimate Fighter and shared a bunk bed with a guy for eight weeks and then we had to fight each other.
"Bubba's a great guy, I'm not going to sit here and be like 'oh I hate him,' and try to make up some fake rivalry for all of you guys [the media and fans]. But I will try and punch a hole in his head on Friday night and he'll do the same for me and we'll all enjoy watching it."
Jenkins is of the same mindset, adding that he "likes Loughane but loves his children," and as such he has to get rid of his rival on Friday night. The event takes place live on Channel 4 from 1am; PFL's last fight on the network before moving over to DAZN for next season.
