George Kimball America at LargeKevin McBride, who faces Andrew Golota at Madison Square Garden on October 10th, was in the Big Apple last week, showing off his new physique. Publicist Bob Trieger invited the New York media to break bread with the Irish heavyweight champion at a midtown saloon called the Playwright - or perhaps, as a hand-lettered sign advertising a soccer telecast on the chalkboard outside identified it, the "Playright".
McBride, alas, was not permitted to share in the repast. The Clones Colossus now has a full-time nutritionist, along with a Croatian strength coach, and those are just a few of the changes. Rich Cappiello, who promoted most of his fights leading up to the Tyson bonanza, is history. So are Michael Moynihan, the Boston lawyer who handled his affairs, and long-time sponsor Dermot Quinn, whose Greenhills Irish Bakery logo adorned McBride's trunks.
And, oh, yes, McBride will also have a new trainer for the Golota fight: Buddy McGirt has replaced the legendary Goody Petronelli, who had been with McBride since 1999.
The way Petronelli remembers it, the relationship began eight years ago when Steve Collins approached him about training McBride.
That Collins, by then retired from the ring, initiated the entreaty to his former trainer might surprise those who recall that after the Celtic Warrior decamped from Brockton in 1991, Petronelli's name was on a breach-of-contract suit that chased Collins across three countries to the High Court in Dublin.
"I'd never had any problem with Steve Collins," recalled Goody, who preferred to let bygones be bygones. "When he asked me to take a look at this kid McBride I said, 'Sure, Stevie, send him on over.'"
Although Goody and his brother Pat had made a small fortune with Marvelous Marvin Hagler, whom they managed throughout his career, a decade ago Goody was training mostly club-fight performers at his walk-up gym in Brockton.
McBride, who had been signed out of the Barcelona Olympics by Frank Maloney and Panos Eliades, had been given his walking papers following a third-round knockout by Michael Murray, a third-rater from Manchester.
Murray, it might be noted, lost 17 of his last 18 fights, so at that point Maloney and Eliades could probably be forgiven for suspecting the Clones Colossus didn't have much of a future.
So McBride moved to Boston, and over the next seven years won 12 of his first 13 fights under Goody Petronelli, who had by then been joined by Paschal Collins, Steve's brother, in the Irish heavyweight's corner. Along the way, McBride established himself as a folk hero among the native Irish population in Boston.
"I never had a contract with Kevin," said Petronelli. "We just shook hands, and that was good enough for me." Two years ago McBride, Petronelli, and Collins hit the jackpot together when McBride stopped Mike Tyson, forcing the one-time "Baddest Man on the Planet" to quit on his stool after six rounds in Washington.
Although McBride remains the only white man to defeat Tyson, he failed to cash in.
"I was supposed to get a world title fight," he says now. "But I didn't get good advice."
He didn't fight again for nearly 10 months, when he stopped Brian Polley in Cleveland, and then last autumn in Chicago, he was knocked out in two rounds by somebody named Mike Mollo.
Enter Jerry Quinn, a Boston publican whose prior experience in boxing came when he hosted McBride's press conferences at his saloon The Kells. He offered to underwrite McBride's quest for redemption by becoming his manager, and put up a reported €22,000 signing bonus. The only condition was McBride agree to a "new team", one of Quinn's choosing. Thus Petronelli's ousting. Packie was also sent packing.
McGirt was named Trainer of the Year in 2002 (17 years after Petronelli won the award) but seems to have spread himself thin nowadays. McBride flew to McGirt's gym in Vero Beach last Sunday, but by last night McGirt was working the corner of his super-middleweight son James jnr for a fight in New York. McGirt is also contracted to train several boxers for the TV programme The Contender, being taped over the next two months. It's hard to imagine he's going to spend much hands-on time with McBride.
If the wisdom of the switch in trainers seems dubious, there can be no doubt it was handled badly. In the weeks before the Tyson fight it was Paschal Collins who got up every morning to do roadwork with McBride, but the last time Collins ran into the heavyweight, he reported, "Kevin didn't even acknowledge my presence." Goody Petronelli never heard from McBride either; he read in the newspaper he was being replaced.
McBride claims he told Petronelli there might be changes, and "when I stopped coming around the gym I thought he'd figure it out for himself".
"I've been in this game a long time, and I've seen them come and I've seen them go," sighed Petronelli. "Kevin didn't owe me anything, and if he wanted to make a change I guess it was his business. But we'd been through a lot together, and I just wish he'd had the gumption to talk to me face-to-face about it."
McBride is being paid some €18,000 for his fight against the Foul Pole, on the undercard of the Oleg Maskaev-Simon Peter WBC title bout - the same as he earned for knocking out Kevin Monity in 2005 - before he beat Tyson.
When we ran into McBride last week he seemed in excellent condition. He is packing nearly 300 lbs of solid muscle, proclaims himself "the New Kevin McBride" and adds, "Mike Mollo didn't beat me; I beat myself." He expects a huge contingent to travel from Boston for the Golota fight. It will be interesting to see how many materialise. The "new" McBride seems to have made few new friends, and he's turned his back on more than a few old ones.
