Glenn Collins

It was hardly a World Wrestling Federation smackdown. But there was enough of a red-meat frenzy to excite a fiercely appreciative audience of aficionados.

On the card? Two rock star neo-butchers. In the southern corner, in chef’s whites: “The Meat Magician of Asnières” — Yves-Marie Le Bourdonnec, a 42-year-old French butcher from the Asnières suburb of Paris. He was wielding Solingen steel. In the northern corner, in butcher apron, gray shirt and black tee: “The Butcher of Brooklyn” — Tom Mylan, 34, who is something of a cult figure in the universe of Brooklyn butchery. His weapon of preference: a 5-inch Forschner boning knife.

Mes amis, there was blood on their hands. It was nothing less than France versus the United States in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, on Monday afternoon. The subject? A matter of (vegetarians: please avert your eyes) butchery.

Specifically, a free high-level tutorial that focused on the difference between French and American butchering techniques. Some 65 unapologetic slicers, dicers and meat-fancying professionals gathered in the cooking-demonstration facility of The Brooklyn Kitchen, adjacent to the Meat Hook butcher shop, where Mr. Mylan is the co-proprietor.

In butcher-speak, the entire event turned on a brutalist phrase: the way that animals are “broken down” in France and the United States. And there are very serious differences. The T-bone steak is a rarity in France. The Americans work with cross sections, whereas the French isolate specific muscles.

“As you will see, all cuts are not the same,” said Ariane Daguin, who was, if not the wrestling ref, in fact the mistress of ceremonies — and the translator for Mr. Le Bourdonnec, who said he understands English much better than he speaks it.

And so, the knife-toting meat men addressed a 234-pound Angus beef carcass supplied by a small farmer in Vineland, N.J., provided by Ms. Daguin, the owner of D’Artagnan, a purveyor of foie gras, truffles and game birds.

At the beginning, cutting progress seemed parallel, and the cuts fairly complementary, as fat was removed and beef began to be sectioned. Then, suddenly, Mr. Mylan disappeared, repairing to his band saw in another room. The song of the saw could be heard plainly while Mr. Le Bourdonnec silently sliced at his meat.

Glenn Collins

Mr. Mylan returned multiple times with trays full of eight-pound bone-in cross-sections of such cuts as sirloin, t-bone, tri-tip and filet. “In America, we cut across everything, then cut the pieces off and sell them,” he said, “whereas the French seam them out,” meaning that in breaking down a carcass, French butchers often follow the seams of muscles and muscle groups, then devote concentrated attention to them.

“Our cuts lack consistency,” Mr. Mylan said. “American butchers are cruder, but their cuts are produced more efficiently, and their meat is more affordable. You don’t see them using the band saw in France.”

Meanwhile, Mr. Le Bourdonnec and an assistant were cutting industriously, producing sirloin caps, sirloin tips, flanks and rumpsteaks. He began carefully rolling and cutting pieces of flank, wrapping them decoratively — and functionally, for taste and texture — with thin collars of lard or interspersing filleted lard leaves with beef cuts in precise assemblages.

“In France, our breeds, like Charolais, have been protected carefully and chauvinistically in many different regions,” said Mr. Le Bourdonnec, the proprietor of Le Couteau d’Argent, a butchershop. He is a consultant to Alain Ducasse and other three-star French chefs.

He added: “Our cattle come to maturity much later than in the United States. And therefore the meat is more expensive, and that affects the cutting.”

Beyond technique, there is the time factor. “Cutting meat in France is very detailed, and more time-consuming than in America,” said Anthony Orliange, an audience member who was the director of a forthcoming film about sustainable beef for Canal Plus in France. He was capturing the session for a documentary called “Global Steak: Will Our Children Have to Eat Grasshoppers?”

And there are other differences. “Dry-aged is important in the United States, but not so much in France,” said Didier Elena, the executive chef of Adour, Mr. Ducasse’s restaurant at the St. Regis Hotel. Mr. Elena sat raptly in the audience with a sous chef to monitor the proceedings.

Furthermore, although commodity beef exists in Europe, Ms. Daguin said that in France, hormones for cattle are generally restricted and feedlots of the vast and constrained American variety are uncommon.

Mr. Mylan looked over to the toiling French butcher and his assistant. “You guys want a cleaver?” They laughed and kept hacking away.

Alors, arrayed before Mr. Lebourdonnec was a meaty assemblage: large lard-wrapped cuts, the tournedos; small sushi cuts, called maquis; hefty wedges “from the heart of the sirloin,” Mr. Le Bourdonnec said, and also plump popiettes, packets of beef constrained neatly in string. Then the French butcher held up a plate of burgers he had just assembled from the flank muscle and lard, “in an 80 percent – 20 percent mixture,” he said of meat to fat. “It has exceptional texture and taste.”

Mr. Le Bourdonnec identified himself as one of France’s neo-butchers. Their American counterparts represent a younger generation of meat-cutters — often recruited from beyond traditional multigenerational butcher families — who have revived the respect for meat-cutting skills and pride themselves on working with animals that have been raised and treated well, and who supply customers locally in competition with factory-boxed chain-supermarket meat.

The Meathook event could be viewed as an expression of America’s boutique butcher-shop revival, or as an ornament of New York’s current meat obsession. Mr. Mylan and Mr. Le Bourdonnec met last spring during the French butcher’s last visit to the city. Mr. Mylan promptly “put me to work in his shop,” Mr. Le Bourdonnec said with a laugh.

A professional conversation and debate ensued. And to, er, flesh it all out, the two decided to give a demonstration of their contrasting styles.

Both the French and American butchers have students and acolytes. “Butchers can be sexy,” Mr. LeBourdonnec said, who can claim some expertise on the subject: he has posed in the nude for a charity calendar.

At the finale, the butchers embraced. Mr. Mylan was self-deprecatory (“I just put stuff in the bandsaw,” he said) and chauvinism won the day. After all, the very word in question is believed to have come from Old French — bouchier, or goat slaughterer.

“In France, we have the best butchers in the world,” Mr. Le Bourdonnec said. “And Americans are the best breeders of pasture-raised beef. If we get together, it should be a paradise.”

Possibly. But at a minimum, by the end of the session, no one got hurt.