Monty Meza-Clay pulled into a gas station Thursday to find another customer staring him down. Meza-Clay tried to avoid eye contact, but the guy kept looking. Finally the man smiled.

"Good luck Saturday," he said. Meza-Clay understood.

The man must have seen the posters or the commercials for Meza-Clay's fight, the first at the Rivers Casino, against Allen Litzau (13-5, seven KOs) tonight. The seven-bout card starts at 7 p.m. The fact that the man recognized Meza-Clay (28-3, 19 KOs) is astounding considering what has happened to Meza-Clay recently.

"You can make a movie off of what I've been through in the past year and a half," he said.

Could you? Meza-Clay mentions movies often. Monty Meza-Clay does not quite roll off the tongue like Jake La Motta. Unlike Rocky, he is a featherweight. But what do movies need? Intrigue, complications, setbacks, heartbreak, redemption, climax. Meza-Clay has them all.

FADE IN:

INTERIOR OF WORLD CLASS BOXING GYM, AMBRIDGE, PA. AFTERNOON.

Up three dark flights of stairs is a high-ceilinged room, home to the World Class Boxing Gym in a brick building on 8th street in Ambridge.

In the mirror stands Meza-Clay, 29, shadowboxing two days before his big fight. Meza-Clay at 5 feet 2 had established himself as one of the premier 130-pounders. He won the IBA super featherweight title in 2005 and was the top-ranked contender for the WBO featherweight title in 2008.

Then, things turned south.

Legal problems jeopardized his future. Business dealings blocked his title shot and sent him out of the country. Multiple injuries forced him to miss more than a year.

"But now I got the city behind me," he said. "I got a great team, and everything seems to be back on track."

To understand Meza-Clay's path to the fight tonight, one must travel further back.

INTERIOR OF CLAY HOME, WASHINGTON, D.C. EVENING

Ramont Clay was born in Pittsburgh to parents who met in the Army but grew up in Washington, D.C. His father was a boxer, but Meza-Clay, who added his Mexican mother's name to his in 2004, never saw him fight. They talked about it, though, and Meza-Clay remembered watching Mike Tyson fight with his dad and his sisters. He shadowboxed his sisters until his dad, also Ramont, told his sister to shut him up, and she did.

"Boom! Hit me with a body shot. I collapsed," he said.

A man whose father trained with Meza-Clay's father found him at school one day and offered to introduce him to boxing. Meza-Clay accepted, arrived at the gym, did what he was told and was anointed a natural.

"Walked into the gym, they liked me, I liked it, never left, and it all started falling into place," he said.

INTERIOR: WORLD CLASS BOXING GYM. AFTERNOON.

The pieces fell into place, but not all in the correct spot. He fought Pittsburgh's Verquan Kimbrough three times and lost them all. Something was missing, he knew, but he could not identify it. So he looked to Kimbrough's trainer and the owner of World Class Boxing Gym, Tommy Yankello.

"It became, if you can't beat him, join them, right?" Meza-Clay said. "I couldn't beat him."

Yankello had trained Paul Spadafora and Calvin Brock in addition to Kimbrough. Both sides of Yankello's family have boxing backgrounds, so he grew up with the sport. He got his first set of gloves when he was 5 and trained in his basement, where his dad installed a small ring and bags. He fought amateur fights as a teenager, but four shoulder surgeries, three on his left side, ended his fighting career. He was not -- could not be -- done, though, so he started coaching at 21, sometimes training fighters older than himself.

"I had to prove to them my ability to be able to help them," said Yankello, the son of a school teacher.

Yankello saw a fighter with raw potential that needed honing. Meza-Clay leaned too much on his left foot, throwing his balance off.

"It's like building a house," Yankello said. "If your foundation is lopsided, you ain't going to be able to do nothing with the rest of the house because the foundation's messed up."

It worked: Meza-Clay won the 2000 state Golden Gloves tournament.

"This guy's crazy," Meza-Clay said of Yankello, 39, who lives across the street from the gym. "He don't have no life. He'll put his life on the line for everybody else."

EXTERIOR: STREETS OF RANKIN. NIGHT.

Movies need complications. In 2002, police questioned Meza-Clay, also working as a jitney driver at the time, about nearby gunshots. Meza-Clay did not know anything about them, but the officers cuffed him and slammed his head into the patrol car. One officer, he said, shoved snow in his face.

Meza-Clay sued the police departments and eventually won a $32,000 settlement. But three days after he sued, he found himself charged as a cocaine dealer. It was a bogus charge in retaliation for his brutality complaint, his lawyer said. He eventually beat it, too.

"God helped me through it. So, it gave me a lot of drive," he said. "I had a lot of things to prove, not only to the people but to myself.

"I'm no saint by no means. But I'm not a devil neither."

Now that Meza-Clay is a father to 9-month-old Jálae Monteé Clay, the margin for error has disappeared.

"Before it was me on the line. Now, it's her on the line," he said. "You can't risk her. You don't gamble with her on the line.

"If I made a movie, I would narrate it because that's what my life is like. I'm always thinking. Fighting with my conscience all the time."

INTERIOR: AUDITORIO TELMEX de UG, ZAPOPAN, JALISCO, MEXICO. NIGHT.

Movies need setbacks. Meza-Clay did not go to Mexico in January 2009 to fight Jorge Solis by choice. After knocking out Fernando Omar Lizarraga in May 2008, he was the top-ranked contender and was guaranteed a shot at then-champion Steven Luevano.

Meza-Clay had lost only one professional fight, to Edner Cherry in May 2006. By that time, Yankello and his brother, Mark, had formed World Class Fight Promotions. The problem was, Yankello said, without naming names, someone within WCFP had embezzled funds from the company. Fight promoters need to place a purse bid on a title fight, and the embezzlement had depleted the funds to do so.

There went the title shot. And Mexico was not hospitable.

"They look out for their fighters, you dig?" Meza-Clay said.

Solis stopped Meza-Clay in the fifth round. Neither Meza-Clay nor Yankello was happy about it.

"He got stung a little bit. Every fighter gets stung," Yankello said. "He was punching back. He took a few shots, and they stopped the fight."

INTERIOR: LAREDO ENTERTAINMENT CENTER, LAREDO, TEXAS.

Movies need heartbreak. Meza-Clay endured low blows early and broke his right hand in the fourth round against Fernando Beltran June 19, 2009.

"I knew it was broken, I knew it was cracked," he said. "Then, I went with my left hand and became that much more effective. You know, when you lose one sense you get better with the other one."

Meza-Clay lost the fight by a decision. In the ensuing year, he had surgery on both elbows, his hand and his shoulder and has not fought since. Thoughts of tonight kept him going.

"The vision remains the same, the goal remains the same," he said. "The destination remains the same."

EXTERIOR: THE RIVERS CASINO AMPHITHEATER. DAY.

Movie plots need redemption. A week before the fight, Meza-Clay and Yankello worked out at the casino. The fight will take place in the outdoor amphitheater, with the ring up against the river. The day was boiling hot, and sweat turned Meza-Clay's gray shirt a darker shade as he worked the mitts with Yankello.

"When I came to see it last week, it's much more than I even expected," he said of the amphitheater. "I'm in awe right now."

EXTERIOR: THE RIVERS CASINO AMPHITHEATER. FIGHT NIGHT.

Movies need a climax. Meza-Clay is pumped for the fight, so much so that Yankello had to dial him down in the last week.

"A lot of people brought to my attention that I'm making history," he said. "I've been at every casino watching fights or fighting. I'm the first big piece of entertainment [at the Rivers], so I'm very excited."

And what better finish to Meza-Clay's story? Yankello hopes that, with a win tonight, they could land a TV fight, and with another win, position Meza-Clay for a title shot. Meza-Clay has family coming to town from New Orleans, Washington, D.C., and Texas for the fight. And he is prepared.

"I've been here before and I know what it feels like," he said. "And I'm ready."

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