Heavyweight Title

Three elimination bouts toward the county heavyweight wrestling title begin tonight, offering a main event between Old Mill's No. 3-ranked Don Marco and Southern's No. 4-ranked Robert Burley.That event features two seniors -- Burley (5-1, five pins) and Marco (8-2, five)-- in a rematch of last year's county final, won 2-0 by Marco. Each was a regional runner-up and finished third in the state, Marco in Class 4A-3A, Burley in Class 2A-1A."I've been waiting for this ever since I beat him, 7-1, this summer," said Marco of their bout in the Eastern Nationals.

MIAMI -- Hasim Rahman knows his ring history.He can tick off the names of the five Baltimore natives who won world boxing championships: Kid Williams, a bantamweight; Harry Jeffra, who won the bantam and featherweight titles; Joe Dundee, a welterweight; his younger brother, Vince, a middleweight; and, most recently, junior-middleweight Vince Pettway, who is still active."

Mention Evander Holyfield, and his title of undisputed heavyweight champion is sure to follow.But one man who disputes this claim is Ray Mercer, reigning champion of the World Boxing Organization, who defends his obscure title against unbeaten Tommy Morrison at the Atlantic City (N.J.) Convention Center tomorrow night."In my my mind, I am the heavyweight champion of the world, and I have a belt to prove it," said Mercer, 30, a former Army sergeant who won the gold medal in the 1988 Olympics.

TACOMA, Wash. -- Pat McMurtry hears bells.He's gassing up his 1990 Cadillac Coupe de Ville, an extra-clean car with little leather boxing gloves dangling from the rear-view mirror. Somebody at the gas station says, "Hey, weren't you Pat McMurtry?" and he hears bells. Not gas station driveway bells, not church bells, but the ominous, sonorous gong of ring bells."It's like I'm young again," McMurtry said. He is 59 and lives alone in the Parkland area of Tacoma, Wash., in a trailer populated by publicity photos, boxing gloves and memories.

To say that yesterday's Dundalk Invitational Wrestling Tournament came down to the final match would be an understatement. It came down to the final points. Harford Tech trailed defending champion Eastern Tech by half a point, and the Cobras' Jesse Watson met Eastern's Billy Farmer for the heavyweight title. The match entered the third period tied at three, but Watson scored a reversal and hung on for a 5-4 win, giving the Cobras the team title and igniting a wild celebration among the Harford Tech faithful.

The first thing you think upon learning Patrick Maizels is a veterinarian whose other passion is weightlifting is that he got sick of trying to hoist Great Danes and other large mastiffs onto the table to administer shots. After all, it doesn't figure: a 1988 graduate of Pikesville High School who went on to UMBC to pick up a degree in chemistry chucking barbells around in his spare time. Why not tennis or Frisbee or golf, a sport he played in school? What started as an outlet while attending veterinary school at Ross University on St. Kitts in the Caribbean within a couple of years put Maizels at a nationally competitive level of lifting.

Jake Hager was all set to enter the real world after graduating from the University of Oklahoma four years ago with a degree in business finance. As he was about to begin working full time at a finance firm in Dallas, however, a piece of mail came to his home that drastically altered his plans. It was a contract offer to wrestle for World Wrestling Entertainment. Goodbye, real world; hello, surreal world. "I had to call [the finance firm] and tell them that I was going to wear spandex and baby oil for a living," he said.

LAS VEGAS -- Unbeaten Riddick Bowe of Fort Washington, Md., strengthened his reputation as a bona fide heavyweight title contender last night by knocking out former North American Boxing Federation champion Bert Cooper of Sharon Hills, Pa., in the second round of their scheduled 10-round bout at The Mirage.Cooper was actually counted out after the bell had sounded. He was floored with three seconds remaining, but could not beat referee Richard Steele's 10 count. Officially, the end came at 3:09 of the second round.

Even with a sparkling record in 2002, Kali Meehan still felt as if he was going nowhere as a professional boxer. "That was the fall of 2002. I wasn't getting any breaks in boxing. I was working two jobs -- security at night and a [garbage man] in the daytime -- and I've got three kids," said the 6-foot-5, 236-pound fighter from Australia. "People were offering everything, but I was getting nothing. I was sick of all the rubbish. So I walked away." The former rugby player spent the next year or so as a hired hand.