SAN LUIS OBISPO, Calif. (MarketWatch) — “Let’s rrrummmmble!” China vs America. Imagine Caesars Palace. Fight night. New announcer. Harvard financial historian Niall Ferguson subs for Michael Buffer, iconic Vegas fight announcer, famous for his signature “Let’s get ready to rumble.” Trump signed him exclusively. Sugar Ray Leonard said, “When Buffer introduces a fighter, it makes him want to fight.”

OK, fight fans, Ferguson’s the new Buffer in this “Fight of the Century.” His must-read book, “Civilization: The West and the Rest,” hit the stands earlier this month. The promos are already rrummmbling: China vs. USA for the heavyweight crown America’s “owned” for centuries.

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Let’s rrummmble! Vegas odds: China wins. Why? You decide: Ferguson’s Newsweek excerpt: “The lesson of history is clear. Voters and politicians alike dare not postpone the big reboot.” Yes, he sees a war of killer apps. Says America needs rebooting.

But also hints at a knockout: “Decline is not so gradual that our biggest problems can simply be left to the next administration, or the one after that. If what we are risking is not decline but downright collapse, then the time frame may be even tighter than one election cycle.”

Get it? Start planning. Now. Later’s too late. Warning: this fight is no video war game with apps that need rebooting. This is the World Heavyweight Championship: China vs America. Huge stakes: Super-Power status. Bragging rights in a global economy that’s $65 trillion racing to $140 trillion by 2050.

No video game. More like an “Ultimate Extreme Fighting” grudge match. Winner take all. East beats West. China conquers America. Let’s rrummble!

No, China is not winning, America’s taking a dive in 6 rounds

Yes, the plot thickens: As an academic, Ferguson plays softball with words as well as metaphors. Imagine his message in colorful jargon by ESPN announcers at a mixed-martial arts fighting brawl. They’d make it painfully obvious: China’s already winning this fight.

Why? Because America’s not “in it to win it.” We’re already throwing this fight, folks.

Yes, I’m mad as hell: Marine vet, don’t like what’s happening in my America today. Yet, Ferguson has a calming perspective. He sees our great nation on an inevitable historical trajectory, a path of destiny that will play out no matter who gets elected in 2012, 2016, or even 2040.

In his grand sweep of historical cycles, even the corruption of ideals and values by self-destructive politicians and greedy capitalists is predictable. And we are setting ourselves up to lose. China’s not winning, folks, we’re taking a dive.

Warning: History proves nations collapse suddenly, rapidly, terminal

Ferguson’s brutal: “Civilizations don’t rise, fall, and then gently decline, as inevitably and predictably as the four seasons … History isn’t one smooth, parabolic curve after another. Its shape is more like an exponentially steepening slope that quite suddenly drops off like a cliff,” an argument he made last year in Foreign Affairs.

History’s loaded with examples: “Machu Picchu, the lost city of the Incas. In 1530 the Incas were the masters of all ... Within less than a decade … their empire” was smashed “to smithereens.” Ming dynasty in a decade. Rome within decades. Recently the Soviet Union:

“And if you still doubt that collapse comes suddenly, just think of how the postcolonial dictatorships of North Africa and the Middle East imploded this year. Twelve months ago, Messrs. Ben Ali, Mubarak, and Gaddafi seemed secure in their gaudy palaces. Here yesterday, gone today.”

And the plot’s so predictable: “What all these collapsed powers have in common is that the complex social systems that underpinned them suddenly ceased to function. One minute rulers had legitimacy in the eyes of their people; the next they didn’t.”

Next? The European Union is at the edge. “In the realm of power … you’re fine until you’re not fine—and when you’re not fine, you’re suddenly in a terrifying death spiral.” Suddenly. Rapidly. Terminal.

Seriously, China is not winning, we’re taking a dive in 6 rounds

Ferguson uses the popularity of killer apps as a literary device to explain the West’s six-part lock on global power for the past five centuries. No, killer apps is softball lingo. Heavyweight championship boxing is a more accurate metaphor.

Why too soft? “In 1500 the average Chinese was richer than the average North American.” More historical facts: “By the late 1970s the average American was more than 20 times richer than the Chinese.” Back in “the early 20th century, just a dozen Western empires — including the United States — controlled 58% of the world’s land surface and population, and a staggering 74% of the global economy.”

No more. In a few short years China’s economy will be bigger than America’s.

Ferguson warns: There’s one main “insidious cause” of the decline of the West: “The tendency of Western societies to delete their own killer apps.” That’s another way of saying that we’re now sabotaging what made America great, committing suicide in six ways. America is really not “in it to win it.”

In fact, we have been throwing this fight for a generation. Here’s Ferguson announcing this historical rumble:

Round #1. The Scientific Revolution … hard right jab to the jaw

Ferguson says “all the major 17th-century breakthroughs in mathematics, astronomy, physics, chemistry and biology happened in Western Europe.” But today, we’re falling behind. “Mathematical literacy” surveys reveal huge gap: China’s youth are way ahead.

Round #2: Revolution in Medicine … solid left hit to the ribs

“Nearly all the major 19th- and 20th-century breakthroughs in health care were made” in “germ theory, antibiotics and anesthesia.” Today America “spends twice what Japan spends on health care and more than three times what China spends.” And yet both beat us with huge increases in life expectancy the last generation.

Round #3: Democracy and Rule of Law … one-two punches to head

Ferguson says “an optimal system of social and political order emerged in the English-speaking world.” But today in World Economic Forum (WEF) measures of “issues relating to property rights and governance,” America’s performance is “shockingly bad.” We’re “50th for public trust in the ethics of politicians, 42nd for various forms of bribery and 40th for standards of auditing and financial reporting.”

Round #4: Domestic, Global Competition … bleeding, cut over eye

“Europe was politically fragmented into multiple monarchies and republics,” says Ferguson, “internally divided into competing corporate entities.” Today our advantage is gone: The WEF shows us in “one of the steepest declines among developed economies,” while China “has leapt up” big-time. At home “extraordinary social polarization,” inequality and a new “super-rich elite” that’s “dangerously divorced from the rest of society” is killing our edge.

Round #5: America’s Consumer Society … pounding, on the ropes

The Industrial Revolution “took place where there was both a supply of productivity-enhancing technologies and a demand for more, better and cheaper goods,” says Ferguson.” Today, “26 of the 30 biggest shopping malls in the world are now in emerging markets” Just three here, as Americans struggle to pay down consumer debts.

Round #6: Our Work Ethic … down, short count, up, staggering

The West was first “to combine more extensive and intensive labor with higher savings rates, permitting sustained capital accumulation.” But “who’s got the work ethic now?” asks Ferguson. “The average South Korean works about 39% more hours per week than the average American.” Their school year is 40 days longer.” And in U.S. universities, we “know which students really drive themselves: the Asians and Asian-Americans.”

Round #7: Can’t come out of corner … referee calls the fight

OK, let’s combine the two metaphors: A championship boxing match-up between two robotic heavyweights guided by killer apps, like in Hugh Jackman’s recent movie, “Real Steel.” But now the rrummmmbling’s over: After many centuries, China has won the World Heavyweight Championship title, taken it back from America, “The West and The Rest.”

Finally, Ferguson wraps up the dueling metaphors: “Most Americans remain instinctively loyal to the killer applications of Western ascendancy, from competition all the way through to the work ethic. They know the country has the right software. They just can’t understand why it’s running so damn slowly.” His solution resonates in America’s Apple generation:

“Delete the viruses that have crept into our system.” Yes, Ferguson says delete “viruses.” America’s suicidal viruses: “The anticompetitive quasi monopolies that blight everything from banking to public education; the politically correct pseudosciences and soft subjects that deflect good students away from hard science; the lobbyists who subvert the rule of law for the sake of the special interests they represent — to say nothing of our crazily dysfunctional system of health care, our overleveraged personal finances and our newfound unemployment ethic.”

Delete viruses? Never happen: Koch brothers? Norquist? McConnell? They’re all rigid, dogmatic ideologues. Fuggetaboutit. Ferguson knows it. But he’s too polite to admit it like a real fight announcer.

You know it too. We’re in denial, kidding ourselves. Secretly we know that few ever learn the lessons of history in time to change, to prevent a collapse. So nothing changes. Nothing. Only a deadly historic catastrophe will jar America’s obsessed, myopic Super Rich and their clueless, ineffectual political puppets and lobbyists.

Get it? A crash is dead ahead. But when it hits, it’ll be too late, the revolution will be raging, and we’ll all suffer, big-time. Wait, listen, a cannon’s roaring. No, it’s the “99%ers” rrummmbling!