Battling McBride pole axed despite his storming start

America At Large:The record book will reflect only that Kevin McBride was stopped for the second successive time, but the bravura performance of the Clones Colossus in his Saturday night slugfest with Andrew Golota was a stark contrast to his timid surrender to Mike Mollo in Chicago a year earlier.

McBride, who weighed in at a career-high 288 pounds, all but demolished the four-time world title challenger from Poland in the first round of their Madison Square Garden bout, belting him all over the ring with a succession of smashing left hooks and hard rights to the head. In fact, a McBride punch that sent Golota's gumshield skittering across the ring may have been the only thing that saved the Foul Pole: the time it required referee Arthur Mercante jnr to retrieve the implement and have it rinsed and reinserted provided the respite Golota needed to clear his head and survive the round.

McBride's first-round performance was so dominating that one of the ringside judges, Don Trella, awarded him a 10-8 round despite the absence of a knockdown.

The Irish heavyweight was apparently so exhilarated that he literally couldn't wait for the second to begin. The instant trainer Buddy McGirt turned him loose in the corner, McBride raced across the ring even before the bell had sounded, and only Mercante's quick intervention prevented him from belting Golota, who was still in the process of rising from his stool.

McBride's dominance, however, produced a remarkable transformation in Golota's tactics. In 46 previous professional contests Golota had always been the slugger, but against the more cumbersome McBride he became a boxer, and behind a surprisingly quick jab he was able to repeatedly beat McBride to the punch.

By staying on the outside and tattooing McBride's face as if it were a speed bag, Golota won each of the next four rounds, by which time McBride was sporting a discoloured mouse beneath his right eye and squinting because of a rapidly swelling haematoma under his left. Not only was McBride plainly wearying from the chase, he was making the plodding Golota look like Sugar Ray Robinson.

Golota was, for him, on his best behaviour. His stock in trade - the low blow - never made an appearance, but the Pole was admonished once by the referee for punching McBride after the bell ending the fifth.

Although McBride landed a few heavy shots in the sixth, late in the round Golota landed a left hook that send him staggering backward, and almost simultaneously the lump under McBride's eye burst, sending a torrent of blood spilling out onto his cheekbone. The combination of the blood and McBride's unsteady legs led Mercante to halt the bout on the spot. Although McBride said he wished the referee hadn't acted so quickly, he conceded he had experienced increasing difficulty seeing out of the eye.

"He was winded and he'd taken some shots," said Mercante. "He can fight another day."

"Kevin surprised me," said Golota. "He was faster than I thought he would be."

"I thought I had him out in that first round," said McBride. "I was close."

Saturday night's bout may actually have revived the careers of both winner and loser.

For at least three minutes McBride (34-6-1) was actually a better fighter than the one who ended Mike Tyson's career two years earlier. The fight was a featured supporting act to the main even, which saw the Nigerian heavyweight Samuel Peter survive three early knockdowns to post a unanimous decision over the American Jameel McCline in defence of his WBC "interim" title.