Thousand Dollar Baby: By day Jamie O'Hare studies for a master's in social work. Her night job is anything but.

O'Hare has a crowd of at least twenty friends and family gathered to watch her tear into the cake. When Hamlett comes over for her piece, Mary Ellen hugs her.

"OK, this is weird," Steve O'Hare blurts. "I don't want to start to like this girl. I want my daughter to pound her!"

An hour later, Jose Ponce corners Jamie O'Hare with an instruction. "You've done the nice thing," he says. "Now stay away from her."

Right about then, Reed and Dena Low are telling Mary Ellen O'Hare how thrilled they are to sponsor O'Hare for her June 21 fight, too.

Mary Ellen nearly drops her Corona Light and lets out a yelp. Jamie hasn't yet told her that bout is on the calendar.

The week of the March 8 fight Jamie O'Hare throws punches in her sleep. She turns in well after midnight and wakes a mere four or five hours later.

St. Louis' two best-known fight promoters, Jesse Finney's Shamrock Promotions and Steve Smith's Rumble Time Promotions, have teamed up for this show, featuring some of the region's premier boxers and mixed martial artists and dubbed "Extreme Fight Party." The tone is glam, with white linens spilling across a sea of tables in the Renaissance Grand Hotel's main ballroom. FOX Sports Network is in the house (the night's fight card will air on FSN at various times from March 20 through April 14).

O'Hare started primping at about three o'clock, after Bible study and a heart-to-heart with her family. She arrives at the Renaissance just before six, wearing a touch of foundation and a few spritzes of chamomile-scented body spray. Childhood friend Lindsay Zoellner has coaxed the fighter's tresses into a pair of taut French braids. Her pedicured toenails sport fiery red polish. "Time to hurry up and wait," she gripes.

At 6:40 p.m. cut man Jerry Leyshock slathers his secret ointment above O'Hare's eyes. Ten minutes later she moisturizes with Albolene.

The right hand gets massaged and taped at 7, the left at 7:06. Jose Ponce appears super-Zen, working his magic on O'Hare's hands. She's in her own world, tapping her foot to her iPod.

Ponce called O'Hare three times today to ask, "How's it goin', champ? What you doin'? What you thinkin'?" But by the time he picked her up for the fight, O'Hare still didn't know who'd be in her corner. She sprang into Ponce's SUV and fired off questions: Did Jose talk to Jesse? Could two people issue instructions? "If Jesse wants to be the lead, tell him to use your words," she'd said.

The show's supposed to start at 7:30, but O'Hare doesn't get in to see the doctor from the boxing commission until 7:36. Carrine "The Punisher" Hamlett is there, gloves already on, carefully watching O'Hare. When their eyes meet, both women let out nervous laughs. Earlier, O'Hare recounted how, since Friday, she was trying to divine her opponent's strategy. "She had such low energy; she was so calm. Is she going to come out like a hurricane, like most girls, or is she going to take it easy, be all cool?

"I had to stop talking to her yesterday," O'Hare confessed, "because I was starting to like her."

Now, back in her team's dressing room after the physical, an irked O'Hare exclaims, "What's up with taking your blood pressure right in front of your opponent?"

Butterflies in the stomach, Ponce has said again and again, are a good thing.

At 7:49 O'Hare's gloves go on. Five minutes later Finney, Ponce and Leyshock huddle up with their fighter and her brother Michael, who has snuck downstairs to lead them in a short prayer. Ten minutes of mitt work later, Leyshock estimates they still have another half-hour to wait. Yells O'Hare: "This is the worst damn part!"

More than once, the stress and sacrifices have made O'Hare consider giving it all up. Though the money is nice — her first pro matchup netted her $1,200; this payday will prove slightly bigger — she could live without it. Sometimes, too, she thinks about how far she has gone in school and wonders, "Why am I doing this?"

Tossing in the towel, though, might mean disappointing the people she has made so proud.

"Jamie inspires me regularly," says Bruce Clements, a scientist with Clean Earth Technologies who knows O'Hare from his days as associate director of SLU's Center for the Study of Bioterrorism and Emerging Infections. "And she won't promote herself, but her many friends will."

Clements is one among a cheering section of 160 that awaits O'Hare in the ballroom. A diverse crowd, they are friends from high school, college, SLU and the Circuit Attorney's Office, even her hairstylist, not to mention her octogenarian grandparents.

O'Hare also can't deny what she loves most in boxing at this point in her life: "You get inside that ring, and you can't run from anything, like you can in the rest of the world."

Finally, at 8:34 p.m., Team O'Hare gets the call to wait in the wings.

Six days a week of training, two-a-days for the past two weeks, about to culminate in four two-minute rounds.

"Quick jabs, a little smoke 'n' mirrors," Ponce has instructed. "Then the body shot. Get that elbow in her ribs. Keep your chin down, especially if she comes in close. If she's fast, dig that glove into her chest."

O'Hare thinks she might vomit.

At a quarter to nine, Dena Low turns over her ringside seat beside husband Reed to Mary Ellen O'Hare. As the words "All Heart" come over the mic, Mary Ellen jumps up and tries to scream but has already lost her voice.

Bagpipes roaring, the spotlight shines on Jamie O'Hare, hooded and motionless in her shiny new robe, emblazoned with "Upper Cuts." When the horns abruptly cut to rock band Korn, O'Hare swaggers to the ring, arms hoisted in the air.

The bell sounds at 8:49 p.m. Effervescence be gone. Still, round one has a politeness to it; O'Hare and Hamlett look like they're getting to know each other, tossing quick jabs but mostly playing their hands close to the chest.

The women pick it up in round two, putting more power behind the punches. Although Hamlett appears to hang back, dancing a bit, she manages a solid right hook midway through that sends O'Hare stumbling.

"Uppercut! Uppercut!" yells Reed Low.

O'Hare comes back with a vengeance in the third round. She dominates with her lower-body movement, backing Hamlett into the ropes on every side. But for the most part both women's long reach seems to prevent them from getting close enough to really have it out.

"It felt more like a sparring session than a fight, and I liked that," Hamlett will say later.

"I was like, 'Come on, fuckin' fight me!'" O'Hare will grumble.

In her corner between rounds, O'Hare is getting it in both ears. No sooner does Finney issue a set of orders than Ponce chimes in with his own instructions just before the bell sounds.

Hamlett and O'Hare both turn up the heat for the last round, moving faster with their feet and their fists. But cut man Leyshock remains on standby. When the last bell rings, no one has gone down.

"If she doesn't win, I'm gonna kick this guy's ass," mutters Reed Low, shooting a glance at the ref.

O'Hare has a lot on her postfight to-do list, from a long-awaited visit to a new St. Louis cupcakery to training for early April's St. Louis marathon. She has also vowed to help Ponce get ready for his first fight in four years, and they both plan to get tattoos. (O'Hare envisions a pair of boxing gloves encircled with "September 23, 2006," the date of her mother's kidney transplant, and "Proverbs 3:5-6.")

O'Hare is scouting for a job in social work within the criminal-justice system and imagines a way of one day linking counseling and boxing for women. She knows it's no sport for the masses, but she believes more than a few could pick up some tricks.

Although it feels like forever, the judges only take a minute or two to file their scorecards. The ring announcer sounds deflated as he ticks off the tallies: 38-38, 39-37 O'Hare, 38-38.

"A draw?" O'Hare's mother moans.

Up in the ring, there's nothing left for Hamlett and O'Hare to do but hug.