America At Large: Kevin McBride is a large, jovial man who enjoys a joke as much as the next fellow. Moreover, he's a big boy and knew the formal announcement of his June 11th engagement with Mike Tyson would make him the object of some derision. He just didn't anticipate how cruel some of it would be.

During a lull on one ESPN show, an announcer told his partner, "I went out for a sandwich just as McBride started to throw a right hand. When I came back with the sandwich it still hadn't landed."

In its coverage of the press conference announcing the bout at the MCI Center in the nation's capital, the Washington Times described the Irish heavyweight champion as "a dead man . . . a fighter with no discernible skill other than an ability to stand on his own until the first jab".

Perhaps the unkindest cuts of all, however, have come in the incessant comparisons between McBride and another New England-based heavyweight with an Irish surname. A decade ago in Las Vegas, Peter McNeeley was Tyson's get-out-of-jail present. He lasted less than two minutes before his manager leapt into the ring to halt the disgraceful mismatch.

"They say I'm another Peter McNeeley, but any man who gets into the ring is brave," said McBride last week. "Besides, he was only half-Irish. I'm all Irish. I know I hit hard with both hands, and anybody with two hands is dangerous. When a man over 200lb lands a shot on another guy's chin, anything can happen."

We're not suggesting that McBride is likely to win this fight - if Tyson's people thought there was a chance of that happening, they wouldn't be fighting - but the perception that it represents a McNeeleyesque mismatch could be misplaced.

McBride is 7-0 in his last seven fights. Tyson is 5-4 with two no-contests in his last 11. And while McBride has been accused of fattening up on suspect opposition, Tyson hasn't always fought world-beaters either.

A year ago McBride was also preparing to fight Tyson. The terms for the July 30th engagement had been agreed, but the contract not signed, and at the 11th hour Tyson adviser Shelly Finkel attempted to slash McBride's proposed $250,000 purse in half, informing him that Britain's Danny Williams was willing to fight for less. McBride's promoter, Rich Cappiello, called Finkel's bluff, which turned out not to have been a bluff at all. Williams got the fight and scored a fourth-round knock-out.

The Englishman's task was aided by the fact that Tyson twisted a knee early in the fight and became an easy target, but Williams did withstand a furious barrage of Tyson punches in the first round, a storm which McBride's suspect chin might not have been able to weather. The dubious perception, particularly among McBride's enthusiastic army of supporters in the Boston area, remains that not only did McBride miss out on a career-high pay-day, but that he would have beaten Tyson in Louisville that night with the same ease Danny Williams did.

"I told Kevin to stay positive," Cappiello recalled last week. "I felt this fight would eventually come back to us. After Tyson got beat, I told him that Tyson would need to come back again. All Kevin needed to do was win, and I knew Tyson would be looking for an opponent around this time."

Ironically, McBride's $150,000 purse this time around isn't much more than it would have been had he been willing to match the Williams underbid last summer.

"I can remember watching Tyson when I was a boy back in Clones," recalled McBride. "I told my father then some day I'd fight this guy. It's a dream come true - especially after all the disappointment last summer."

At his Washington appearance, Tyson predicted that the impending encounter with McBride would be "a train wreck", but added: "It's a no-win situation for me. If I knock him out in two seconds, he's a bum. If he gives me a shellacking, I'm a bum."

"We're coming to fight Mike Tyson, but we're also coming to beat him," promised trainer Goody Petronelli. "I told Kevin there is only one way to win a fight. 'What's that, he asked'. 'By not losing', I told him."

Petronelli, the career-long trainer of middleweight legend Marvellous Marvin Hagler, also guided the early career of Steve Collins. Collins' brother Paschal will be working the McBride corner along with Petronelli and has been appointed the training camp coordinator. Paschal has already made arrangements for a training camp outside - honest - Londonderry in the Vermont mountains, and Steve Collins has done his part by helping to line up sparring partners.

The McBride party, then, will relocate to Vermont on Sunday for five weeks of training away from the distractions of Boston's pubs.

Even though he has a 9in height advantage and figures to outweigh Tyson by at least 30lb, McBride will be a heavy underdog, but then so was Williams. When it was suggested the Clones Colossus' chances would increase dramatically if he was still on his feet after three rounds, Petronelli said: "Exactly. People don't change their style once they develop it. For the first three rounds (Tyson) is going to come out there and try to hit my guy with everything but the ring post. I'm expecting that, and the chances are he's not going to change."

After the Washington press conference, McBride returned last week to another in Brockton, outside Boston, where a long-time supporter presented him with a good luck charm: a set of those ear protectors construction workers wear around building sites.

"Don't worry about my ears," laughed McBride. "Mike won't be able to reach them."