McBride could soon be the last white hope

America at Large: Where is Rocky Balboa when we really need him? One Ivan Drago was bad enough, but four of them? Four months ago we warned you that this might happen, and now it has come to pass: the communist takeover of the heavyweight division became complete last Saturday night in Las Vegas, when Oleg Maskaev floored Hasim Rahman twice in the final round on the way to a 12th-round technical knockout of his opponent.

In winning the World Boxing Council title, the Kazakhstani boxer joined three other sons of the former Soviet Union who already owned heavyweight belts. The four generally recognised world titles now belong to Maskaev, Nicolay Valuev, the seven-foot "Beast from the East" (Russia), who holds the World Boxing Association version of the championship, Wladimir Klitschko, the International Boxing Federation champion from the Ukraine, and Sergei (The White Wolf) Liakhovich, a Beylorussian who currently reigns as the World Boxing Organisation title.

In the face of this Red Menace, the term "Great White Hope" has taken on an entirely new meaning.

One might have supposed that since the four extant heavyweight champions have at least a shared history, the always-messy business of unifying the titles might have been enhanced by Maskaev's recent conquest. In fact, within hours, Klitschko representative Shelly Finkel rang in with an offer to stage a Wladimir-Oleg fight this autumn.

That match-up would at least have offered the trappings of a grudge match. Years ago, when both were fighting for the Red Army team, Maskaev knocked out Wladimir's brother Vitali.

The WBC almost immediately put the damper on that one, ruling that Maskaev's first defence must be against the winner of next month's James Toney-Samuel Peter eliminator.

With Rahman the last American standing, its promoters had jingoistically christened his ill-fated bout against Maskaev "The Last Line of Defence". Now that all four championships have left the country, American hopes could soon be riding on the lumbering shoulders of an adopted son - Ireland's Kevin McBride.

Although McBride had been prominently mentioned as a potential challenger to Liakhovich, it now appears that The Clones Colossus will be forced to endure yet another trial by fire before getting his long-awaited crack at a title. He has been matched against another former Soviet-bloc heavyweight, Poland's Andrew Golota, on the undercard of Valuev's American debut against Monte Barrett in Chicago two months hence.

When McBride stopped Mike Tyson in Washington 14 months ago it was considered one of the more significant upsets in heavyweight history. (The greatest upset in heavyweight history quietly occurred six weeks ago, when Tyson improbably lived to celebrate his 40th birthday.)

Although the win appeared to point McBride toward financial security, guaranteeing, as it did, at least one more big-money fight, the 33-year-old Irish champion has barely ventured out of Dorchester, Massachusetts, in the intervening year.

He has boxed just once, earning a fourth-round TKO over journeyman Brian Polley in Cleveland this past April. A shoulder injury incurred in that fight, combined with another injury sustained in a Boston fender-bender, has kept him on the shelf since.

Now he goes from having to worry about being bitten by Tyson to protecting his family jewels against Golota, whose most celebrated boxing achievements came in two fights against Riddick Bowe.

(On both occasions Golota was ahead on points, only to be disqualified for multiple low blows, fouling his way to losses in fights he could literally have lost no other way.)

In their primes, the Foul Pole would have been overwhelmingly favoured over McBride, but Golota has been even less active than his Irish opponent. He hasn't fought in more than a year, and was winless in his three bouts before that, having fought to a draw with Chris Byrd, dropped a decision to John Ruiz, and been stopped in just 52 seconds by Monte Barrett in Chicago last summer.

McBride finds himself attempting to claw his way back into a heavyweight picture that has become to most Americans virtually devoid of name recognition.

As my old colleague Fast Eddie Schuyler pointed out in a column for thesweetscience.com a few days ago, television viewers can probably rattle off the names of more current poker champions than can name today's heavyweight champions.

At seven feet and 330 lbs, Valuev is the tallest, heaviest and, in all likelihood, ugliest heavyweight titleist in the annals of boxing, but were the WBC champion to walk down the street of a major American metropolis, Schuyler pointed out, the most likely response he would elicit would probably be something along the lines of "Wow. The circus must be in town."