PECHANGA INDIAN RESERVATION, Calif. -- Ricardo Mayorga kept throwing big shots until one landed. When it did, Vernon Forrest was no longer undefeated and no longer a champion.

	Third-round TKO victim Vernon Forrest suffered the first loss of his career.

Mayorga dropped Forrest with a vicious right hand in the third round Saturday night of a welterweight brawl to add Forrest's WBC 147-pound title to the WBA title he already owned.

It was the second straight upset win for Mayorga, a free-spirited and big punching Nicaraguan who wasn't afraid to trade punches with Forrest and finally landed a big one.

To celebrate, Mayorga lit up a cigarette and had a smoke in the ring as his jubilant supporters at the Pechanga Indian casino danced about in glee.

"I don't have beautiful style, but I have strength,'' Mayorga said through an interpreter.

Mayorga was a 6-1 underdog, but the fight turned into a punching contest where he had his best chance after Forrest went to the canvas for the first time on a disputed knockdown late in the first round.

Forrest appeared angry after the knockdown, which appeared to be more of a slip, and began trading wild punches with Mayorga in the second and third rounds.

It turned out to be a big mistake as Mayorga landed a right hand midway through the third round that dropped Forrest into the ropes.

"When you fight a guy who's kind of wild you want to let him know right away he's got to show you some respect and that's what I tried to do,'' Forrest said.

Forrest (35-1) held onto the ropes to keep from going down completely, but he was out on his feet when he got up and referee Marty Denkin waved the fight to a close at 2:06 of the third round.

"I got caught but I think they stopped it too quickly,'' Forrest said.

Mayorga saw it differently.

"When I hit him with the right I knew he was going down,'' he said. "Then I hit him with the left to get him out of the ring.''

Forrest, who had two big wins over Shane Mosley last year and was fighting the first fight of a lucrative HBO six-fight contract, did not protest.

Mayorga, who celebrated his fifth round knockout of WBA champion Andrew "Six Heads'' Lewis last March by having a cigarette and a beer, boasted before the fight he would have little trouble with Forrest.

"I plan to whip him like a man whips a boy,'' Mayorga said.

For a while it looked like Mayorga (25-3-1, 23 knockouts) would get the whipping as Forrest landed some good counter shots and two big uppercuts in the second round. But the punches seemed to have little effect on Mayorga, who kept throwing wild punches back at his fellow champion.

Forrest was coming off his wins over the previously undefeated Mosley that gave him not only the WBC 147-pound title but also accolades as the 2002 fighter of the year.

But 2003 didn't start nearly as well, as the 1992 Olympian lost for the first time in 36 fights.

Forrest said his contract for the fight had a rematch clause and he wanted to use it.

"I want a rematch immediately,'' he said.

Mayorga was having fun just before the fight started, going over and parting the ring ropes so Forrest could enter.

Once the fight began, though, he was all business, winging huge but wild punches at Forrest and hoping that some of them would land.

Punch stats showed how furious the fight was. In less than three rounds, the two fighters combined for 333 punches, with Forrest getting credit for landing 57 and Mayorga 45.

In an entertaining undercard fight, former 130-pound champion Joel Casamayor took a unanimous 10-round decision over previously unbeaten Nate Campbell in a junior lightweight fight.

Campbell (23-1, 21 knockouts) took the fight to Casamayor, a 1992 Olympic gold medalist for Cuba, and landed some big right hands early in the fight. But the left-handed Casamayor (29-1, 18 knockouts) found his range and came on to win the late rounds despite a cut and swelling around his left eye.

Casamayor won by six points on one card, four on a second and two on the third, a decision booed by the crowd. Campbell, of Jacksonville, Fla., was just as incredulous

"I think I won the fight,'' he said. "The only thing hard about this fight was beating the judges.''

Casamayor's only loss came last January to Acelino Frietas, a decision that cost him his WBA 130-pound title.