It had been more than two decades since a white man had won the world heavyweight boxing title.

The eccentric promoter Don King knew not only that, but that the United States was still a country with deep racial divisions. So when Gerry Cooney — a stout, white New Yorker with a punishing left hook — agreed in 1982 to face the reigning champion, Larry Holmes, who was black and from the Pennsylvania rust belt, King knew what he had to do.

“If it’s an antagonistic fight between two blacks, it’s one thing,” King said in a recent interview. “But if it’s an antagonistic fight between a white and a black, then you can play the race card tremendously and get an overwhelming return.”

Such deliberate racial themes, long a tradition in boxing, might not be laid out quite as starkly on Saturday night when the boxer Floyd Mayweather Jr., who is black, and the mixed martial arts fighter Conor McGregor, who is white, square off in Las Vegas in a boxing match.

But race has certainly influenced this spectacle of a bout between two titans of their respective sports in ways both stark and subtle.