Bill Wade, Post-Gazette Joe Mesi was suspended from boxing after a brain injury in a March 2004 bout. Click photo for larger image.

CHESTER, W.Va. -- Tommy Morrison, the former heavyweight champion forced into a 10 1/2-year, HIV-or-not absence, isn't the only boxer on tonight's comeback card who was once spurned by boxing over medical issues.

"All the power to Tommy. The important thing is, he's healthy and I'm healthy," said Joe Mesi, who joins Morrison on the card tonight at The Harv at Mountaineer Race Track & Gaming Resort. Mesi will be making his third American match since he spent years fighting -- outside a ring -- to stay in a sport that suspended him after a brain injury in a 2004 bout. "But I lost two years of my career. Never will get it back."

Mesi, 33, is the co-feature of the ring-resurrection card that starts at 7:30 p.m. and the Versus Network telecast that commences at 9 p.m. His scheduled 10-rounder against George Linberger (29-8-1) of Akron, Ohio, will be on the air as will the International Boxing Council Continental title fight between battling Humbertos: super-featherweights Soto and Toledo.

For Mesi, it's another step in a long climb back between the pro ropes, his first 10-round contest after scheduled four-rounders in a Michigan casino and an Arkansas fairgrounds, a six-rounder in Montreal and an eight-rounder in Puerto Rico. Those were the only places, the only commissions, that would license him in his return two years after doctors found bleeding in his brain following a victory -- his 29th against nary a loss -- against Vassiliy Jirov in Las Vegas on March 13, 2004.

The Mesi controversy, akin to Morrison's medical declaration about now testing negative for the HIV that forced him from the sport after a positive test in a 1996 pre-fight physical in Las Vegas, casts a harsh light on the West Virginia Boxing Commission.

"I have to be careful" about violating laws regarding privacy over medical records, chairman Steve Allred said from his Charleston, W.Va., office. "But rest assured that the commission is going to ensure that there are no medical problems for either Tommy Morrison or any other fighter before they step into the ring at Mountaineer. We are requiring certain medical examinations for certain individuals on this card. And we are requiring extensive medical tests."

Morrison said that he took an additional blood test to satisfy West Virginia officials. That puts him back in a ring for the first time since Nov. 3, 1996, in a scheduled four-rounder against John Castle (4-2) of Indianapolis, who last fought in 2005.

There also was a battery of tests to buffet the "five or six different" blood tests that he had in the past months, said Morrison, a World Boxing Organization and IBC heavyweight title-holder in the early to mid-1990s.

Mesi, meantime, said he had an MRI and was examined Monday by nationally acclaimed neurosurgeon Dr. Julian Bailes, the chair of West Virginia University's neurosurgery department and a key player in research done with NFL retirees at the University of North Carolina.

Allred and his five-member commission, which operates on a $20,000-a-year state appropriation, used these new test results along with other materials -- records from the Association of Boxing Commissions, along with commissions in Nevada, Arizona and elsewhere -- to make their ruling. West Virginia officially is listed as one of roughly seven states in the United States that have no medical requirements to box there.

"We feel we're doing due diligence to the best of our ability to try to ensure the safety and well-being of everybody involved in this event," said Allred, who has a day job as the executive director of a West Virginia-Ohio chapter of an electrician's union. "My secretary is going to beat me up. I have devoted entirely too much time to boxing the past five weeks."

West Virginia's investigation into Mesi's situation was commended by the boxing boss in the sport's busiest, and arguably most medically regulated, state: Nevada.

"I have to give a lot of credit to Steve Allred out there," Keith Kizer, who served as Nevada's chief deputy attorney general before taking over its boxing commission a year ago, said earlier about the Mesi situation. "Unlike Puerto Rico and other states, Mr. Allred contacted me to get all the relevant documents. I know he has done other things as well. So I'm very pleased with Mr. Allred.

"But he understands fully that it's his call. ... Intelligent minds can differ. At the end of the day, if he finds Mesi fit to fight, that's his decision. And I hope he's right."

Kizer was the legal counsel for Nevada and the commission when Mesi took them to court to win back his right to fight. After Nevada rules stripped him of his license and thus placed him on the national suspension list because of the brain bleeding, Mesi wasn't permitted to even toil in a gym, he said.

Bailes called the hematoma "a thin layer of blood" between the brain and cranium, and "no significant risk." Mesi returned for an MRI that found the first hematoma split into two, "and I was told they were minute, barely visible. I'm not trying to minimize the injury: I was injured. But [rules] can't be so black and white. It has to be handled case by case."

He won his case, using reports from five neurosurgeons, including Dr. Robert Cantu -- most recently noted as the physician for former Patriots concussion-addled linebacker Ted Johnson -- who is expected to work in his corner tonight. Bailes also is scheduled to be at ringside.

"I've had so many MRIs, my eyes should be glowing," Mesi said, joking.

Morrison, similarly, calls himself a "pin cushion" from all his blood tests, including one that, he said, found no trace of HIV in his DNA. After doing charity work for years for HIV causes and trying medical techniques to avoid the virus in fathering two HIV-free children, Morrison now believes that his initial tests were a false positive and he doesn't have the virus that causes AIDS.

Still, doctors and West Virginia's commission cleared both to fight tonight, Mesi (33-0) to continue his comeback and Morrison (46-3-1), the former "Rocky V" co-star and prison inmate, to launch his.

"When we did Mesi, we took a lot of heat," said Shane Crampton, head of the boxing commission for the Little River Band of Ottawa Indians who hosted Mesi most recently, in November, in Manistee, Mich. "We met with a lot of doctors and heard both sides of the story.

"But I don't know if I would put both of those guys on the same card. I'm glad I'm not regulating there."