McBride reeling as future in doubt after comeback defeat

IRISH heavyweight Kevin McBride sent himself into a fantasy world yesterday but it was of the Disney not boxing variety as he was left to contemplate his future in the ring following a comeback defeat at Madison Square Garden.

Former heavyweight challenger Andrew Golota of Poland stopped 34-year-old McBride on Saturday night with a technical knockout after the 2005 conqueror of Mike Tyson suffered a cut just beneath his left eye.

With the eye virtually closed referee Arthur Mercante stopped the fight with Golota ahead on the scorecards after 2:42 of the sixth of 12 scheduled rounds, giving the 39-year-old Pole the IBF North American heavyweight title.

McBride’s new manager Jerry Quinn had admitted last week that a wrong turn in this crossroads fight for his charge would probably spell the end of both fighter and handler’s boxing careers. But as McBride flew south from New York for a holiday with his girlfriend and daughter at Florida’s Walt Disney World, Quinn said no quick decision on the Irish heavyweight’s future would be reached.

“We’re naturally disappointed that we didn’t win,” Quinn said last night. “This was a suck-it-and-see fight and we’d made no plans beyond it, so we don’t know what we’re going to do.

“Kevin will make up his own mind about things and we’ll sit down and talk when he returns to Boston next week but I know I did everything I possibly could for the fight.”

This was McBride’s second defeat in a row in his third fight since shocking the boxing world with his stoppage of Tyson in Washington DC two years earlier.

Yet McBride had almost scored a dramatic first-round knockout. He had started aggressively and followed up a big left to Golota’s jaw with some relentless pressure.

A heavy right hook then had the Pole in trouble, with McBride forcing him into retreat but failing to finish him off.

Golota even rallied at the end of the first as the two veterans went toe to toe, much to the delight of a strong Polish contingent among the 7,021 crowd, most of whom had gathered at the Garden to see the WBC Interim Heavyweight title headliner between Samuel Peter and Jameel McCline.

That failure to get the job done inside the first three minutes would cost the Boston-based McBride dear. Golota won the next four rounds on all three judges’ scorecards and in the pivotal sixth round, though McBride came out strong, landing a big right hook and then a pounding left to the Pole’s head, he was rocked back on the ropes himself with a right that opened the cut under his left eye.

Having suffered a lesser cut on his left eyelid in the previous round, the eye was closing quickly and referee Mercante did not need a second opinion to call the fight off.

It was a decision the game McBride questioned. “No, I didn’t think the ref should have stopped it but I was having trouble seeing out of my eye,’’ he said. ‘‘He really didn’t hurt me until the end.

“I thought I had him out in the first round. It was close, I’m okay now.”

Mercante begged to differ, saying afterward: “Kevin was winded. He took a lot of shots. He can fight another day.”

Quinn agreed with the referee’s decision but was less sure whether his man would fight again.

“His eye was getting closed, he couldn’t see out of it, and it should have been stopped. The bottom line is the boxer himself and so the right decision was to stop the fight.

“He was under pressure at the time but I’ve seen Kevin under pressure before. He had Golota running across the ring a few times, taking him off his feet, but you never know in the fighting business.

“I don’t what the future is but we’ll see.”

The victory puts Golota back in the frame for a shot at Wladimir Klitschko’s IBF title and he said: ‘‘Kevin surprised me. He was faster than I thought he would be and he didn’t get tired.

“But I proved tonight that I can still fight with anyone.”

In the main event, Samuel Peter got up off the canvas three times to beat Jameel McCline and retain his WBC interim world heavyweight title.

Peter, from Nigeria, was knocked down at the end of the second round and twice during the third by Florida-based New Yorker McCline but gradually edged his way back into the fight to take a unanimous decision after the allotted 12 rounds.