BERKELEY — If it seems like an exercise﻿ in kitschy slapstick, look closer: the White Collar Brawlers, two former desk jockeys who quit their jobs to train as amateur boxers, are deadly serious about attacking each other in the ring Friday.

Nate Houghteling and Kai Hasson, both 26, have been building to a climactic showdown and each predicts he will wreck his friend. Neither has ever been in a real fight, and neither knew anything meaningful about the sweet science when they started. However, they’ve undergone a punishing three-month training to earnestly become the best boxers they can be.

They’ve chronicled all this — their fanciful original idea, their radical reassessment of what the undertaking would demand of them, the effort on their friendship as tension and antagonism have grown — in an online video series that will culminate Friday in a live stream of the fight at Berkeley’s Westwind Boxing Gym.

The public rivalry began with a jokey tone that could easily have put off boxing fans: Two old friends, both sick of staring at computer screens all day, started an Internet video series that showcased the inept pair as they jibed and gamboled their way through training. Predictably, the experienced boxing trainer they hired to kick them around was loud and demanding, and frightened them both.

That trainer, Angelo Merino, is a 35-year veteran of the fight game, and he said his colleagues warned him early on to avoid the project. It was a joke, they told him; it would damage the prestige of amateur boxing and hurt his reputation, especially if the fighters made fools of themselves in public. Merino was skeptical.

“I would have sworn this would fail if you asked me at the beginning,” he said this week. “At this point, to the contrary, they’ve progressed tremendously. Their movements are flawless, and as a matter of commitment, their commitment is there. They’re beginning to love it.”

Boxing history is full of great rivalries that pit a dancing, technical boxer, expertly employing speed and finesse to dominate his opponent, against a slugger, an indomitable punching machine with a hunger driving him forward through every incoming jab to land a hit.

Muhammad Ali and Joe Frazier are the most famous example, followed closely by Sugar Ray Robinson and Jake LaMotta. Hasson and Houghteling may not have the cache or anywhere near the experience, but a side-by-side comparison shows their matchup has some similar qualities. Hasson relies on his footwork, accuracy and strategy and the heavier Houghteling promises to cut off his friend’s retreat and deliver flurries of crushing punches.

The underdog

Hasson, billed as The Half-Asian Sensation, will be fighting a man who outweighs him, has a longer history of athleticism, punches harder and has been training with a world-champion fighter. In their first exercise challenge, he was outrun and fell behind his opponent in both push-ups and sit-ups.

However, Hasson’s carrying a four-inch advantage in reach and has been moving faster in training. He’s had a consistent trainer the whole three months. He’s more slender, which limits his power but might make him harder to hit. In early training, he absorbed the first blows to his head with more assurance, brushing off the hits and working to improve the accuracy of his counterpunches.

Hasson, a self-described romantic and intellectual, said Monday that “we’re living out my fantasy.”

“I really get sucked into these adventures sort of believing something special can happen and what not, and I always thought that, in entering the boxing thing, that maybe this could be a transformative experience. Maybe I would be actually really good at boxing,” he said on the show.

Hasson has found boxing a lonely sport, he said — the independence is invigorating, but however many people might be in your corner, you’re alone up there on the canvas.

Except, of course, for the intimacy a fighter shares with his opponent.

“It’s like a one-night stand, in a way,” he said. “You’re beating bodily fluids out of each other and it’s just the two of you up there. You learn a lot about each other.”

Hasson predicted this week the fight will end in 30 seconds, with his oldest friend crumbling under pressure.

“I think he’s coming into it overconfident,” he said. “His trainer’s been talking a lot of smack, playing mental games with me, but he’s also playing a game with Nate. It comes off as inauthentic.”

The athlete

Houghteling’s taken a different approach to learning the fight game. It’s less romantic, less concerned with the story he’s living out: The lesson simply is about becoming the best amateur boxer he can be.

“If Kai is going to be self-deprecating and complain, that’s fine. I have my own demons to struggle with,” he said. He admits to “hamming it up” in early episodes of the show but says he faced numerous moments of self-doubt and difficulty as he grew into a new understanding of what it means to learn boxing.

“Nothing can prepare you for getting a big shot to the face,” he said. “When it first happened to me, how I reacted was the opposite of what will help you in a fight. I had a freak-out.”

He’s since learned, he said, not to treat the overwhelming feeling of such a punch as the end of things; instead, it’s an opportunity to come back strong.

“The sensation of being hit like that, you don’t get used to it ever, but I didn’t know how to file it away as a sensation the body feels, at first,” he said. “Now I know.”

About a month ago, Houghteling parted with the trainer he and his friend shared and took up with world-champion boxer Ana Julaton and her associate, Angelo Reyes.

Whether that training will prove to be a boost that helps Houghteling stop Hasson in the ring, or a source of false bravado that contributes to his downfall, both fighters say they are committed to bringing out the hardest fight they can, despite and perhaps even because of their friendship.

“One thing I keep telling Nate to remember is Kai chose to be up there,” Reyes said. “It would be disrespectful not to beat the hell out of him. It would show you’re not taking him seriously.”

Contact Sean Maher at 510-208-6430.