George Kimball America At LargeWith the possible exception of Kevin McBride himself, Dermot Quinn was the happiest man in Boston yesterday. For the past few years the proprietor of the Greenhills Irish Bakery, where the Clones Colossus takes his breakfast each morning, has paid McBride a small sum to wear the logo of his establishment on his boxing trunks, an investment which could pay tidy dividends when it is seen by the hundreds of thousands of television viewers expected to watch McBride's July 30th fight against Mike Tyson.
Perhaps, it was suggested yesterday, Quinn might want to hedge his bets by asking McBride to put the Greenhills logo on the soles of his boxing boots as well.
"Oh, no," exclaimed Quinn. "Kevin's going to put Tyson on his ass!"
Not even McBride is willing to second that rash prediction, but, warned the 31-year-old Irishman, "this is heavyweight boxing. All it takes is one punch."
Tyson, the one-time "baddest man on the planet", hasn't stepped into the ring in anger since February of 2003, when he knocked out Clifford Etienne in one round. He will turn 38 in two weeks.
McBride, on the other hand, has grown a bit older himself while waiting for Tyson. He hasn't fought since December of last year, when he polished off Marcus Rhode in three rounds at the Roxy in Boston.
The contracts haven't yet been executed, but they are expected to be signed tomorrow. McBride will fight Tyson at Freedom Hall in Louisville, Kentucky (home of the Kentucky Derby and birthplace of Muhammad Ali).
Showtime Pay-Per-View will handle the American television rights, and K-1, the Japanese martial arts outfit which had provided Tyson with a tidy advance but then balked at McBride as the opponent, will apparently not be involved.
Rather, Louisville-based Straight Out Promotions will stage the bout.
McBride kept himself in shape while the on-again, off-again Tyson negotiations vacillated over the past six months. Two months ago the outlook appeared bleak enough that he agreed to fight erstwhile contender, and former Tyson victim, Lou Savarese on an ESPN card in Connecticut, a fight which appeared to be unduly dangerous for McBride.
But then fate intervened.
McBride suffered a cut in a sparring session with Rhode Island heavyweight Robert Wiggins and was withdrawn from the bout. Substitute Leo Nolan easily handled Savarese that night.
"I'd have beaten Savarese that night, and the guy in the ring with him, too," said McBride yesterday.
Tyson has been in the gym at the Central Boxing Club in Phoenix for three weeks already, training under the aegis of Freddie Roach, who said two days ago that Tyson "is in better shape right now than he was for the Etienne fight".
McBride ("I'm ready to get down to business") has been training for months, but next Monday will travel to the Pocono Mountains of Pennsylvania for the first full-fledged training camp of his 36-fight professional career.
"I was up there once before, many years ago," recalled McBride.
Early in his career, the Clones Colossus was the junior member of a London-based heavyweight triumvirate consisting of himself, Lennox Lewis and John Ruiz, managed by Frank Maloney and promoted by Panos Eliades. A decade ago he accompanied Lewis to the Poconos when the then-champion was preparing for his defence against Phil Jackson, but, said McBride, "Lennox wouldn't spar me".
McBride, who won the All-Ireland professional heavyweight title by beating Paul Douglas in Belfast seven years ago, has lived for the past several years in Boston's Dorchester section, but commutes each day to the Brockton Gym of his legendary trainer Goody Petronelli, whose most accomplished product was the great middleweight champion Marvin Hagler. (Ironically, the Petronelli-Roach match-up brings together two of Steve Collins' former trainers.) Petronelli was already a New England institution when Roach, voted Trainer of the Year for 2003, turned professional a quarter-century ago, but Tyson's trainer won't exactly be in awe of the grizzled guru.
"I've already been up against Goody," pointed out Roach, who was in the corner of James Toney when he was upset by the Petronelli-trained Malawian Drake Thadzi in 1997.
"I'm not worried," said Roach. "I have the better fighter." He paused for a moment and then added, "Of course, I had the better fighter that night, too, and still lost."
Tyson won't start sparring until next week, but Roach already has him up to 10 rounds on the mitts. More important, says the trainer, has been Tyson's businesslike attitude.
"His camp entourage is down to two people," said Roach - although that number will swell by at least one next week, when the mysterious Carlos "Panama" Lewis is due to hit Phoenix.
Roach plans to assemble the same cast of sparring partners he used to prep Toney for his scheduled bout against six-foot-six Jameel McCline last winter before the 2003 Fighter of the Year ruptured an Achilles' tendon in training.
At this point McBride has sparred only with Wiggins, but promoter Rich Cappiello plans to bring a full roster of sparring partners to the Poconos, including Tyson's cousin Robert Lee Fredericks, who is scheduled to fight in Ukraine in the next few weeks.
McBride is six-foot-six and weighed 260 for his last outing, against Rhode. (Tyson was 225¾ for Etienne.) He turned professional in 1992, and has an overall record of 31-4-1 which includes knockout losses to DaVarryl Williamson and Axel Schultz. He has won his last six in a row. We worked the telecast on half of those bouts and can attest to the fact that, while most of McBride's victims had winning records, there were no world-beaters among them.
When Roach asked Tyson what he knew about McBride, Tyson summarised his foe neatly: "A big white guy who can punch a little," said Iron Mike.
While thrilled to be in the spotlight, the affable McBride admits to having already taken umbrage at some of the pre-fight publicity.
"They keep describing me as 'fodder' and 'a journeyman'," said McBride. "Look, I'm a fighter. I love boxing. I know I'm supposed to be a stepping-stone for Tyson, but the way I look at it, he's a big stepping-stone for me."
