Inactive for nearly a year, Wayne McCullough will attempt to win his second world championship on February 28th in Las Vegas, when he challenges Mexico's Erik Morales for the World Boxing Council super-bantamweight title. McCullough shares the bill with America's popular WBC welterweight champion Oscar De La Hoya, who will make a mandatory defence against Frenchman Patrick Charpentier in the main event. Although just days ago the Morales-McCullough bout appeared to be dead in the water, an agreement this week between the Belfast boxer's manager Mat Tinley and Top Rank promoter Bob Arum, which added the British and Irish television rights to McCullough's $150,000 purse, apparently sealed the deal.

Last January in Boston, McCullough, who had relinquished his WBC bantamweight title to move up to the higher weight, suffered a bitter first career loss in a hard-fought challenge to the organisation's grizzled 122-pound champion Daniel Zaragoza. Despite some rather acrimonious post-fight statements directed at the WBC and a subsequent year's lay-off, his promoters had skilfully manoeuvred him back into the number one spot in the ratings. His right to a mandatory challenge might well have been imperiled had he walked away from the Morales fight, but just a few days earlier that seemed to be a chance Tinley was willing to take.

Morales' less-than-intimidating performance in defeating John Lowey in Tijuana last Friday night probably helped break the log-jam. Until he was forced to retire with a hand injury, Lowey more than held his own, despite the fact that he seemed to be simultaneously battling three opponents - Morales, the Mexican crowd, and, most formidably, referee Lawrence Cole. But, noted Tinley this week, "Wayne McCullough is not John Lowey. That fight didn't change our negotiating position at all."

McCullough, who earned $500,000 for the Zaragoza fight and another $600,000 for an earlier defence in Japan, returns to find the world of boxing's lowerweight classes a potentially more lucrative place than the one he left a year ago. Prince Naseem Hamed, virtually unknown on the side of the Atlantic a year ago, makes his American debut against New Yorker Kevin Kelley at 2.00 a.m. tomorrow at Madison Square Garden. For the Sheffield featherweight, it is the first outing in a multi-fight package with the US network HBO. The entire arrangement is supposed to be worth $8 million to The Prince, but the guys who fight him are going to make a lot of money as well.

"This will be the least money Wayne's ever made in a title bout," conceded Tinley, "but we're looking at it as an `opportunity' fight.

"At the same time," added Tinley, "it wasn't as if we didn't have other options."

Indeed, as a hedge against the Morales match-up, Tinley was negotiating right up until last week for a McCullough fight against Junior Jones, who fights Kennedy McKinney on the Madison Square Garden bill. The winner of Morales-McCullough will join Jones, Marco Antonio Barrera, and 130lb champion Arturo Gatti as major players in the Hamed Sweepstakes.

"Put it this way," said Tinley. "When Wayne is at the top of his game, we think he can beat any of these guys - including Morales, including Junior Jones, including Hamed.

"Against Zaragoza, he just didn't fight his fight for the first five rounds. Then he just ran out of time - and a lot of people think he still won that fight!"

Besides absorbing a devastating psychological blow with the Zaragoza loss, McCullough also came out of the bout with a broken jaw, a condition which accounts for part, though not all, of his subsequent inactivity. Over the past six months, he had been scheduled to fight four times, but none of the bouts materialised. The boxing world was rife with rumours that McCullough was unhappy with Tinley, that he was being wooed by rival promoters on both sides of the Atlantic, that Wayne didn't want to fight at all.

"I was back in the gym three weeks after the Zaragoza fight and I've been there virtually every day since," said McCullough. "I've sparred over 300 rounds. Why would I do that if I didn't want to fight?

"The important thing to remember is that I never pulled out of any of those fights myself," insisted McCullough from his Las Vegas home this week. "Well, there was one where I was only offered $12,000 to fight off television, which I thought was insulting. But the first time I was going to fight, in June, it was my trainer Thell Torrence who insisted that I not fight. He didn't think I was ready yet.

"There was a Rudy Zavala fight announced for August, but then I was simply told I wasn't fighting. Even though Zavala weighed 132lb, I was ready to fight him in September, but then I hurt my back 10 days beforehand and couldn't fight. (McCullough was replaced by Tracy Patterson, who handled Zavala with ease.) And even though I wasn't happy with what was originally offered for Morales, I never turned that down either!"

When McCullough signed with Tinley fresh from his silver medalwinning performance at the Barcelona Games, he represented a one-man stable for the wealthy young American. Over the last year, though, Tinley has branched out into the promotional field himself, founding a new company called "America Presents" which he hopes will one day compete with the Don Kings, Dino Duvas, and Arums of the boxing world.

McCullough has not expressed dissatisfaction with Tinley the manager, and last spring he signed a 5-year extension to his promotional contract with America Presents. (He even asked for, and received, a $50,000 advance on his back-loaded signing bonus when a few bills came due.) There can be little question, though, that the boxer feels trapped by the inevitable conflict which arises when Tinley finds himself at cross-purposes attempting to represent both his client (McCullough) and his company. (Had another promoter offered McCullough a $12,000 purse before America Presents came on the scene, Tinley would have laughed in his face.) A week ago, when it appeared the Morales fight was on the rocks, Tinley and Goossen scheduled McCullough for a comeback fight on a January 10th card in Los Angeles. At the moment, it appears McCullough will keep that commitment, using it as a tune-up for the title bout six weeks later. Although no opponent has yet been chosen, Tinley said "we're looking for someone who can give him some rounds, to try to knock some of the ring rust off. But, obviously, we're not going to put him in with a big puncher."

Although McCullough denies that rival promoters have attempted to subvert his relationship with Tinley, Dan Goossen, chief operating officer of America Presents, recognises the inevitability of that situation.

"It's just like being married to a beautiful woman," said Goossen. "You can't be around her every minute, and every time she goes out in public there are going to be guys hitting on her and asking her out for a drink. The important thing is that you trust her - and even if you don't, you still have a marriage contract that is legally binding."