Young, rich and ready to rumble - the cream of the Premiership hit Las Vegas for the big fight.Led by England's Wayne Rooney, the high-rolling stars showed even the bling-bling capital of the world just how to party.
Roo, 21, his fiancee Coleen McLoughlin and a clutch of A-list soccer pals flew into Vegas last week for boxer Ricky "The Hitman" Hatton's world-title fight in the early hours of this morning.
And while their pal Ricky sweated it out in the gym, the off-duty players made sure it was spend, spend, spend all the way.
After hitting the desert resort's famous strip and boozing till dawn, they worked off their hangovers on Friday with the ultimate pool party. Roo, plus Man Utd team-mates Rio Ferdinand, Wes Brown and John O'Shea, Newcastle's Kieron Dyer, and Chelsea stars Joe Cole and Shaun Wright-Phillips all larged it at the famous Hard Rock Hotel.
The hotel's pool is a specially-created sandy beach, and the clientele, as the delighted boys found, are as hot as the 45-degree temperatures.
The players frolicked in the water with bikini-clad swimmers while sipping margaritas. At one point Dyer whipped off a girl's top.
Earlier Rio - who left girlfriend Rebecca Ellison at home in rainy Manchester with their year-old daughter Lorenz - and winger Wright-Phillips both struck up a conversation with the girl, who was wearing a red bikini and red polka-dot headband.
She later paired off with Wright-Phillips - to cackles of laughter and nudge-nudge wink-winks from Brown and Dyer. It all had the air of a raucous boys' holiday in the sun - except in five-star luxury, not a grotty apartment in Magaluf.
Also at the poolside was Chelsea and England star Cole, who was nursing a marathon hangover.
The players dive-bombed each other and played volleyball as dance music boomed out from the ultra-trendy hotel's giant speaker system.
One onlooker said: "The Hard Rock Hotel is a magnet for rich, young and hip people and they seemed to fit right in."
Cole had run into a spot of bother on Thursday night when the players hit the Venetian Hotel casino. He lost £1,000 in 10 minutes.
The £60,000-a-week midfielder held up the high-stakes game to get an explanation of the rules after admitting to fellow players that he had no idea how to play.
Taking the loss in good spirits, he laughed and shrugged his shoulders then headed for the bar. From there it was on to the VIP area at top nightclub Tao, where staff were told to keep the beer, whiskey and Tequila coming all night.
Cole, 25 - who left girlfriend Carly Zucker at home in London - chatted to several scantily-clad girls, swigged whiskey straight from a bottle and smoked cigarettes as he danced bare-chested to deafening rap music.
Wearing gold-rimmed rap-style sunglasses and thousands of pounds worth of "bling", Ferdinand, 28, and Brown, 26, waved their hands in the air and whooped before a heaving crowd of more than 3,000 clubbers from a raised section of the dance floor. Wayne and Coleen tucked themselves away in a private booth and spent most of the night holding hands and drinking vodka and Red Bulls.
"The players were larging it like they owned the place," said one onlooker. "As soon as their table filled up with champagne and bottles of spirits, the girls flocked to them like a magnet.
"Joe Cole was by far the merriest of the lot. He had a mate with him who stepped in a couple of times to hold him up. He had three gorgeous American girls flocking round him.
"He undid all the buttons on his shirt and one of the girls had one hand up his back and the other on his bare chest."
The Tao club is part of Las Vegas's famous Venetian Hotel and casino complex, modelled on Venice and featuring a network of indoor canals with gondolas.
Coleen, 21, proved she had more stamina than all the men put together - by being last to leave. She helped Roo into a cab at 5am after travelling down an escalator backwards as Rooney staggered down a steep flight of stone steps drinking from a can of Red Bull.
They strolled arm in arm to a nearby taxi rank where a handful of Brits recognised them and began chanting Wayne's name.
Most of the players stayed at the resort's newest and plushest hotel, the 3,500-room Wynn, where private villas with their own pools cost £3,500 a night.
The party-goers were joined on Friday by new manager of Sheffield United Bryan Robson, Newcastle United's Joey Barton, Middlesbrough and England's Stewart Downing plus snooker player and legendary hell-raiser Jimmy White.
"They are all close friends off the pitch and wanted to support Ricky Hatton," a source said.
With such celebrity pals in tow, Manchester-born Hatton, the brightest British boxing hope for years, is certainly putting the glam back into boxing.'
if i got cash to go vegas, i rather go to watch Man Utd play