CHESTER, W.Va. -- Forget all that nattering about the circus coming to town, because with all the ear chompers, alphabet-soup organizations, Euro-trash champions, rankings scandals, recycled headliners and almost as many competitors in legal trouble as Cincinnati Bengals, the train for boxing's bearded-lady freak show pulled out eons ago. Not that there's anything wrong with bearded ladies.

So when the West Virginia Boxing Commission graciously permitted the chance to fight at Mountaineer Race Track & Gaming Resort to a Tommy Morrison, who tested positive for HIV in 1996, and a Joe Mesi, who had bleeding on the brain in 2004, there was no reason for hyenas to howl about Almost Heaven better resembling the Land of the Living Dead.

Boxing historically has been all about ring returns. Jim Braddock, Cassius Clay/Muhammad Ali, Larry Holmes, Mike Tyson, Oscar de la Hoya and Bernard Hopkins are just a few of the comeback commodities proving that boxers never retire, they merely go on hiatus, or "go away for awhile" -- i.e. prison. Such instant dramas are what transform the squared circle into a stage, but the importance of that stage seems to be eroding. Cable television doesn't make as much of a big deal about boxing anymore. Ultimate Fighting Championship is growing so popular, it airs on TV almost as much as poker or CSIs. Almost.

As the heavyweight division goes, so goes boxing, and nowadays, it's going nowhere. Quick, name a champion. Sorry, that's a trick question, because one of the sanctioning bodies probably crowned a new one in the time it took to read that sentence. The division is a bevy of yawners named Oleg, Nikolay, Wladimir, Sultan, Ruslan, Sergei -- and you probably thought that was the Anaheim Ducks starting lineup.

If the sport hired Vince McMahon's rasslin' writers, what strange, hackneyed, popular storylines would they come up with? Why ... maybe a couple of all-American guys overcoming past medical issues, fighting the establishment, packing punch in heavyweight fists.

Yes, Mesi and Morrison are precisely what boxing is asking for. Not in a single matchup, however.

"I recently turned down [Evander] Holyfield," Mesi said after his savage first-round knockout of George Linberger, the 40-year-old, former Arena football player with the knee braces. "I thought they would market it as the old guy vs. the brain-damaged kid."

His noggin is fine, all right. The subdural hematoma he sustained in 2004 is no longer an issue to him, but it is to several big-ring states -- such as New York -- that have regulations banning boxers with a brain bleed on their record. He fought Nevada once, in court, and won. To try to achieve his next goal of fighting in front of his Buffalo hometown, he plans to meet with the New York governor and endure even more testing beyond the "40 CAT scans, the 50 times I've had to touch my nose." His army of neurosurgeons goes into a tad more detail than that, including Dr. Julian Bailes of West Virginia University, the NFL retirees' studies and the disability case of late Steelers center Mike Webster. And with Bailes clearing Mesi to box, while saying that medical research makes no link between a past bleed -- especially a small one such as Mesi's -- and any future recurrence, then that's good enough for me.

Funny, but count Morrison among Mesi's doubters. He told the New York Daily News: "That's the guy they should be worried about. Here's a guy who's going to be fixing the lawnmower in his front yard one day, and he's just going to fall over dead. He has a serious problem. There's nothing wrong with me."

True, Morrison says a lot of things. When he originally tested positive for HIV in 1996 -- and more than once -- he ascribed it to promiscuity. He since labeled it a false positive he blamed on steroid injections. Then he admitted to taking HIV medications at least during his 14 months in prison in the middle of his 10¹/₂-year absence from boxing. Whatever, he is able to test negative for the virus in independent, reliable blood tests.

"The last 10 years of my life have been really dark," Morrison said after knocking out John Castle, 35. "Tough times never last, tough people do."

This ultimate toughman -- he beat the AIDs virus people may say, incorrectly, because it could well still be in him, suppressed -- will get licensed to fight elsewhere. Bob Arum and his Las Vegas-based Top Rank are banking on the name of this former "Rocky V" co-star and his still-changing storyline to captivate enough fans to make him a pay-per-view fave. After all, George Foreman came back at 38 after a decade's rest, too.

Medical marvel? Sideshow? No, just ... boxing. Who knows, it just might be entertaining to watch.