It’s the closest thing you can get to an international prizefight on Wall Street.

Yesterday, British private-equity heavyweight Guy Hands and one of the US’ most prominent banks, Citigroup, squared off in a high-stakes legal battle and each side was armed with an army of high-priced lawyers bickering over the $6.7 billion acquisition of record label EMI in 2007.

“Citi was playing two sides of the street at the same time,” David Boies, the lawyer for Hands’ Terra Firma company told the jury sitting in Manhattan federal court, attempting to cast Citi as greedy bankers out for nothing more than hefty fees.

Hands claims Citi’s bankers lied to him during the sale of EMI, home to artists Katy Perry and Coldplay, and said a rival bid was being readied by PE rival Cerberus.

No rival bid was under consideration, Terra Firma claims. Believing there was, Hands raised his offer and is now suing over the alleged false claim.

Citi’s legal eagle, Theodore Wells, told the jury that the 51-year old Hands was simply upset that he made a bad business decision and was looking for a scapegoat.

“Hands thought he had the golden touch, said Wells. “And he did, until he bought EMI. It turned out to be a bad deal and people lost a lot of money. There was no fraud. There were no lies.”

In fact, Wells tried to portray Citi as the victim — telling the packed courtroom the bank was on the hook for the $2.5 billion it loaned Hands to finance the transaction, a loan that is now in default.

Terra Firma’s case hinges on a series of phone calls in May 2007 between Hands and London-based Citi banker David Wormsley, who Hands accuses of having lied to him in order to lure Terra Firma into bidding up the price of EMI.

Wormsley had been considered a buddy of Hands, who he had invited on vacation with him to Italy and taken to opera events, Citi lawyers said. Wormsley sat through much of the first day of the trial flanked by his lawyers. He could be seen flipping a coin between his fingers nervously or rubbing his eyes in weariness, during one of the numerous minutes-long sidebars that peppered the early portion of the case and wound up pushing the opening portion of the trial into today.

Hands, a former Goldman Sachs banker who left the firm to focus on private equity ventures, seemed jittery in a blue-gray suit that appeared baggy on the PE honcho, whose wealth and flamboyance have made him a celebrity in the UK.

Many of the jurors hearing the case, which focuses on some of the titans of private equity and Wall Street, appeared overwhelmed by the wonky, esoteric banking terms being spouted by the lawyers.

In fact, halfway through Boies’ opening statement, one juror in the front row appeared to fall asleep. The trial is expected to last two to three weeks.

The civil suit was presided over by federal trial judge Jed Rakoff — a judge who’s earning a reputation as “Judge Dread” in Wall Street circles for his pull-no-punches style.

Some of that style was on display yesterday, when Rakoff, after jurors had been adjourned for the day, asked Terra Firma CEO Tim Pryce, who was on the witness stand, about the PE firm’s code name for the EMI deal — “Project Dice.”

Rakoff told Pryce that the name could lead one to believe that it thought the deal was “dicey.”

Hands and Wormsley could take the stand today.