McBride ends Tyson era

Boxing: It may not go down as one of the classic heavyweight fights but on an enthralling and elegiac night in the sweltering American capital, the Irish outsider Kevin McBride restored some romance and heart to the demoralised world of professional boxing.

No matter what the generous and lionhearted giant from Clones goes on to achieve in the fight game, it is hard to imagine that any future experience in his sporting life will compare to the pathos and melodrama that unfolded on this steamy Saturday night in downtown Washington. With a show of courage and a boxing sensibility that few gave him credit for, McBride became an overnight sensation on what was the closing chapter to one of the most compelling and disturbing eras in modern sport. No matter what follows, Kevin McBride will always be remembered as the boxer who brought down the curtain on the fighting life of Mike Tyson.

The end came not with the cinematic haymaker from the blue which almost all experts believed McBride would have to concoct to have any hope against the menace of Tyson. But instead, the most explosively violent fighter of the modern sporting era just remained on his stool after six rounds after failing to make any impact on McBride's gigantic frame.

"Kevin fought a good fight," Tyson would say later. "I wanted to finish it out but my trainer Jeff Fenech was too sensitive to let me to back out there and get beat up on."

Tyson's humble acceptance that his time has come and gone was all the more poignant given the presence of Muhammad Ali. The Greatest gazed on impassively as Tyson went through his last rites and the unheralded Irishman, derided and insulted on American television over the last few days, grew in stature and in confidence. By the sixth round, despite receiving a cut below his left eye from a head-butt by Tyson, McBride was raining uppercuts and thunderous hooks down upon the smaller man, who cowered and shielded himself in a way that would have been unimaginable in his prime.

By then the majority of the 17,000 fans, the bejewelled and perfumed studs and honeys who shelled out up to $700 for what was supposed to be a night of celebration for Tyson had begun to bay and jeer in disbelief.

Far up in the stands, the Irish Tricolours fluttered as the big Monaghan slugger began to take bold and confident steps around the ring, seeking out the man who was supposed to be the hunter. Late on in the sixth round, a lingering, heavy left hook, loose as the swing of a bear's paw, was enough to leave Tyson reeling and then falling against the ropes. For what seemed an eternity, he remained on the canvas and the night was poised on the terrible possibility that Tyson was on the verge of a breakdown there and then. But finally, he moved gingerly and with astonishing slowness back to his corner. He would not come out again.

Seconds later, the referee took hold of McBride's massive fist and held it in triumph to a stadium trembling with emotional meltdown. As Paschal Collins and 83-year-old Goody Petronelli rushed on to the floor to greet the delighted Irishman, with half of Clones in train, the magnitude of what had occurred began to hit home.

"I came here to fight and to show everyone I am a warrior," McBride said. "Like, I'm not the fastest man in the world but I have big, Irish heart. I just want to thank my mother and my father at this stage, Lord rest him."

It was fitting he mentioned his parents for even in his hour of glory, McBride's unassuming dignity and basic good manners did not desert him. Half way through his press conference, he received a whisper that the great Ali wanted to meet him and he jumped up from his chair like a child, begging forgiveness from his audience.

There followed a fairly remarkable few moments when the Champ drew the Irish man close to his ear and embraced him and traded a couple of mock punches while McBride shook his head in disbelief.

Then he wrapped his huge hands, inherited from his father, around Ali's and told him he was the greatest. For the hard-boiled followers of American sport, it was a rare and unscripted departure from the usual choreographed scene. But then, the entire evening had a slightly surreal feel to it.

Although his skills have now unquestionably vanished, Tyson still possessed enough charisma to bring out the bloodlust in people from all walks of life. Seeing him destroy and ruin the gargantuan Ulsterman was to be the turn-on of Saturday night's entertainment, and the more gruesome and lurid the better. And as Tyson stalked the ring in his familiar black shorts, the gold teeth glimmering and those intelligent eyes shining black, the memory of all the men he reduced to desperate wrecks over the years came flooding back and it was impossible not to feel a shiver of apprehension.

But it was all a chimera. Sure, he feinted with flashes of the preternatural quickness that was his trademark and early on he punished McBride with those darting right hooks and thunderous body shots that used to be enough to fell all kinds of reputations. Not on this Saturday night, though, and not ever again.

"I just don't have the heart for it anymore," Tyson would say later in a long and piercingly eloquent valedictory afterwards.

"Not so long ago, an old basketball player said to me in Phoenix, 'I feel good, I look good but when I go out there I can't do it anymore. That's how it was for me. I wanted to win. But shit, I was dead. It was strange, I felt like I was 120-years-old out there."

The fitting thing was that boxing, a sport which seems inclined to disgracing itself whenever possible, should have lucked upon a character as genuine and admirable as McBride to bid Tyson go gentle into the good night.

"Mike was probably one of the greatest ever but he has been on the road a long time," said McBride. "I happened to get him at the right time but it was a pleasure to be in the ring with him. And I don't know it if is the end of the road for Mike Tyson but it is just the beginning for me."

No one would wish it otherwise. McBride may get the title shot he so covets soon after this night and no matter how long more he stays in the fight game, he will be talking about being the last man to step into a ring with Mike Tyson until he is an old man. Where Tyson himself will be by then, God only knows.