Five PBA Tour champions led by top qualifier Dom Barrett of England will battle for the fifth major title of the expanded 2012-13 season, when the PBA World Championship airs Sunday at 1 p.m. ET on ESPN.

In the opening match of the crown jewel of the World Series of Bowling V, PBA Hall of Famer Pete Weber of St. Ann, Mo. meets last week’s Scorpion Championship winner Tom Smallwood of Saginaw, Mich., in the opening match from the South Point Hotel and Casino Exhibit Hall complex.

Weber will be trying to win his second major this season after winning the PBA Tournament of Champions last March for a record-tying 10th career major championship and 37th career title. With a third career World Championship title, Weber would move ahead of Earl Anthony for most major titles and move into third in all-time Tour titles, one ahead of Norm Duke.

Smallwood, whose Scorpion win was the second of his career, is trying for his second World Championship title having won the 2009 title in Wichita, Kan. That win started a firestorm of media attention for Smallwood who won his first major shortly after being laid off from his job at General Motors during the peak of the nation’s economic downturn.

The Weber-Smallwood winner will take on No. 3 qualifier Mike Fagan of Fort Worth, Texas, who will be trying for his first win of the season and fifth of his career. A World Championship win would give the 2012 USBC Masters champion his second major title. Thus far this season, Fagan’s best performances have been three fourth-place finishes.

The winner of match 2 will take on reigning PBA Player of the Year and No. 2 qualifier Sean Rash of Montgomery, Ill. He will be trying for his third win of the season with two international titles coming in World Bowling Tour events in Thailand and Kuwait. A World Championship win would give Rash his third major and eighth career title.

The semifinal winner will meet tournament leader Dom Barrett of England who will be trying for his third career title and first major. Barrett, the winner of the Viper Championship in WSOB III, won the Qatar Open earlier this month for his second career title. He also would join Finland’s Osku Palermaa, the 2011 PBA World Champion, as the second international player to ever win the prestigious major championship.

The finalists earned their berths in the stepladder finals through four seven-game qualifying rounds totals from the WSOB Cheetah, Viper, Chameleon and Scorpion Championships plus 24 games of match play.

A Christmas edition of The Bowling Center, a feature of pba.com’s Xtra Frame available on Youtube, includes a recap of last Sunday's Scorpion Championship, The Drilling Room ball segment with Jason Thomas and Jef Goodger, and ESPN play-by-play announcer/Xtra Frame host Mike Jakubowski interviews PBA Hall of Famer Jason Couch.

Bowling fans who missed last Sunday's Scorpion Championship telecast can find the show archived on Xtra Frame. For Xtra Frame subscription information, visit pba.com and click on the Xtra Frame link.