Darrell Sapp, Post-Gazette IBA super featherweight champion Monty Meza-Clay spars with his trainer and manager yesterday at Mellon Square Downtown.

Queen rocked Mellon Square Park yesterday. No, not The Queen, but the Freddie Mercury Queen of "We Will Rock You/We Are the Champions." Those tunes bounced around Downtown corridors from the park beneath the high-noon shadows of the Omni William Penn Hotel.

This was the scene where Monty Meza-Clay staged a public workout -- his last meaningful training -- before his fight tomorrow night. Across from the fountains. On a platform usually reserved for bands, speakers, pigeons, whatever. At lunchtime when 300-plus people, from day-care tots to college students to shoppers to conventioneers to Downtown workers, strolled through the park and did a double-take.

What is all this racket? And why is that guy getting his hands taped?

In front of a crowd of "businessmen and young people" that trainer Tom Yankello and Meza-Clay wanted to attract, folks from suits to shorts stopped to watch the Rankin junior lightweight who makes a rare hometown return in a pro card starting at 9 p.m. tomorrow inside Heinz Field's Coca-Cola Great Hall.

"Ted [Arneault] gave us his blessing," Yankello said of their usual promoter, the Mountaineer Track & Gaming Resort boss for whom Meza-Clay fought 20 of his 24 career bouts in Chester, W.Va. "Ted gave us the right for Monty to branch out between fights there. Here we are on a Friday night in Pittsburgh."

He last fought close to home May 22, 2004, in a Harmarville ice rink against a guy named Marcus Luck, who had little of it that night. Heinz Field on a weekend night, an International Boxing Association super featherweight world championship belt, a foe in Carlos Contreras who once fought on world title stages -- it all equates to a momentous homecoming for the main-event man.

"It means the world," said Meza-Clay, 26. "Everything.

"It's a dream come true. I saw Paul [Spadafora, a former lightweight champion in the International Boxing Federation] do his thing in 1997. That's when I knew I wanted to be a champ. My life is a movie. My life is going into production."

The audience he and Yankello aim to attract showed yesterday in the park, the kind of folks who might not get the chance to travel to West Virginia on a Thursday night, a regular venue and time to which Meza-Clay expects to return for a July or August fight.

So this 5-foot-2, 126-pound boxer attempted to put on something of a fistic display yesterday to show off the abilities that allowed him to compile a 23-1 record. He first nabbed the IBA belt Dec. 30, 2005, at Mountaineer. He got some ESPN2 exposure about a year ago, when he stepped up in weight class and fell hard on an 11th-round technical knockout in Tampa, Fla., to Edner Cherry, holder of another organization's lightweight belt. Since then, Meza-Clay reeled off three consecutive victories, two by TKO, but he hasn't been satisfied.

"Anytime I come off a bad performance, I feel obligated to the public to put on a good fight," he said. "This guy has fought for world championships. It's going to bring the best out of me."

A onetime holder of the World Boxing Union super bantamweight belt, Contreras, 31, lost a bout for the IBF championship at the same weight and lost a bout for the North American Boxing Association title at featherweight. He lost to Johnny Tapia in 2003. He lost to Daniel Ponce de Leon in 2004. He has lost seven of his past eight pro bouts. Yet this 5-6 Mexican brings a puncher's style.

"This is like Marc Antonio Barrera vs. Erik Morales," Yankello said of a famed pugilistic trilogy of bouts. "[Contreras] fights like an old-school Mexican fighter."

On a school-day Downtown, several International Academy of Design and Technology students watched the first wide-open, tricked-up public boxing workout in Pittsburgh since ... Larry Holmes-Renaldo Snipes in 1981 ... Ezzard Charles-Jersey Joe Walcott in 1951? "I didn't really realize what was going on until I got down here," said Erik Brammell, 19, of Trafford, who at first thought it might be a break-dancing exhibition, which he does. "We saw his hands getting bandaged up, so we knew. I love boxing." So much, that Brammell twice ripped off his shirt to take a fists-up photo with Meza-Clay. "I know I have a fairly decent body," Brammell explained.

A few others posed for photo ops. Onlookers clicked cell phone pictures of Meza-Clay working out and banging his gloves into Yankello's mitts. When it ended, a few dozen newfound fans surrounded the hometown boxer seeking autographs.

"I had a vision it could be like this," Yankello said after the half-hour workout that was, the Ambridge trainer admitted, "nothing strenuous." He added: "That's why we did this. We attracted a lot of people with the music first. But this is the crowd we haven't been able to get."

NOTES -- A few seats remain available through Ticketmaster. The promoters opened two new sections, and those tickets can be purchased by calling 412-337-0586. Standing-room-only tickets will be made available at the door, if necessary. ... The card also includes area boxers Juan McPherson, Leslee Perella and Chris Archer. ... Among the onlookers was 178-pound state Golden Gloves champion Jim Lubash.