A local boxer got the call up for a professional bout and while he didn’t go as far as he hoped, it was a good way to end his career.

Local contractor Brad Wilson agreed to a fight versus Markhaile “Showtime” Wedderburn on Saturday, June 24, in Calgary. It has been a while since Wilson stepped in the ring, but he rolled the dice.

  “It wasn’t something I planned really, I just put the idea out there, and the sharks kind of grasped it,” he said.

Wedderburn was a formidable opponent in the cruiser weight division, and Wilson said a lot of fighters were backing down from him.

“He was big and strong and kind of out of my league a little bit, but somebody had to do it,” he chuckles.

He worked hard to get himself back into fighting shape and went toe to toe.

Wilson tells the Mail he did well through the first and second round. It looked like a fairly even match, however right at the end of the second, Wedderburn tagged Wilson right between the eyes. The fight was stopped.

He is going from swinging punches back to swinging his hammer. Wilson says that was his last fight, and ends a full career. While it has been a few years since he had stepped into the ring, he was happy with the effort.

“I had over 100 amateur fights in the 90’s,” he tells The Mail. Professionally going in, he had a 1-1-1 record.

The Martian landscape of Drumheller will be used to the fullest this weekend as the first Canadian International Rover Challenge takes on the hills.
The University of Saskatchewan Space Design Team has organized the weekend. There is also a team from Carleton University in Ottawa and observers from the Missouri Institute of Design and Technology.
"The premise of the competition is there is an establishment of habitation on an extraterritorial body, in this case, Mars, and the university teams have to design a rover that assists that establishment,” explains Justin Gerein, a member of the Saskatchewan club.
The rover teams will be challenged with tasks such as retrieval of items in rough terrain or simulating prospecting for things such as resources or signs of life.
This is the first year of the Canadian event. Many of the students have traveled to other competitions including the United Kingdom, and the premier University Rover Challenges at the Mars Desert Research Station in Utah.
Gerein said Drumheller is well suited for the competition.
“It offers more opportunities for terrain that would be like on Mars; the dry, the rough, the iron rich soils,” he said. “We could have gone to the Badlands of Saskatchewan and found similar terrain, but there is infrastructure here to support attendance.”
The challenges will be taking place throughout Saturday and Sunday at Midland Provincial Park and McMullen Island. Spectators are welcome to check out the action.