By Jim O'Sullivan
News Editor

When it comes to comparisons, the easy one to reach for when describing Kevin McBride is not necessarily one he'd like you to grab. Given the size of his hands in relation to the size of your hands, he'll probably have his way on this one.

Still, there is one thing the genial giant with the mammoth paws would like to have in common with Peter McNeeley, apart from the obvious on-paper similarities: big, slow-handed, Irish, local. He doesn't want the Medfield tomato can's troubles with substance abuse and he doesn't want his "Hurricane" nickname &endash; "Colossus of Clones" sounds better, anyway.

What Kevin McBride would like is this: He'd like to fight Mike Tyson. And not the way McNeeley did, in an 89-second eyeblink of a bout.

"To fight Mike Tyson would be a dream for me," McBride says. "And I think I can knock him out."

McBride, a 31-year-old, 6'6" behemoth of a heavyweight who lives on Train Street and trains in Brockton, could get that chance this spring. He rates the likelihood of a McBride-Tyson match at 90 percent, echoing reports in the Italian newspaper Gazzetta dello Sport, and said purse and venue remain the haggling points.

"I'm no Peter McNeeley," McBride says, and he is not. The Irish native holds the heavyweight title in his country, and donned the tri-color trunks in the 1992 Barcelona Olympics. He is ranked 29th in the world, according to the World Boxing Council.

Another and more pointed dissimilarity, according to McBride promoter Rich Cappiello, is more relevant.

"What's the difference? Kevin's a real fighter. Peter's a fake. Peter McNeeley was a big farce," Cappiello barks into his cellphone, pointing out that McBride is 31-4-1, with 26 knockouts.

McBride takes a different tack toward the same point. "No disrespect to Peter, he's a good fellow. But he was a plastic Paddy," McBride says, leaning his chair against a wall in Greenhills Bakery in Adams Corner. "I'm 100 percent Irish."

He is that, a native of the town of Clones, in County Monaghan, a county in the Republic of Ireland that juts like a belly-whomping uppercut into the southernmost portions of Northern Ireland. He says he came to conquer the American fight game three years ago and, with the help of local Irish pubs and businessmen, has the time on those outsized mitts of his to sip tea in Greenhills on a Tuesday afternoon and nod to everybody who comes in, and pal around with owner Dermot Quinn's young son.

Oh, and there's training. Five miles every morning of roadwork, around the streets of Neponset, sometimes out around Castle Island. Every day, down to Brockton to train under the practiced eye of the legendary trainer Goody Petronelli, who trained middleweight champion Marvelous Marvin Hagler, and promoter Cappiello, who claims blood ties to Rocky Marciano, patron saint of the City of Champions.

All of which is well and good, except it will carry little currency between the ropes against a certifiable like Tyson. McBride dismisses out of hand one prospective injury, saying that Iron Mike can't bite him the way he did Evander Holyfield because he's too tall.

And Cappiello says that Tyson's age and well-documented emotional instability both work to McBride's advantage. He says Tyson's mystique as a stone-fisted madman doesn't figure in McBride's mindset.

"You've got to approach it thinking to yourself, 'I'm fighting a 37-year-old Mike Tyson, a Mike Tyson that's got a lot of issues," Cappiello says, promising that the two hard punchers could never go a full 12 rounds &endash; and betting his man would be on the winning end.

"Right now, where Tyson is in his career and Kevin is in his career, I think he's got a real chance of knocking Tyson out."

While Tyson ages, McBride does, too, and Cappiello knows his stable's prized stud has to hustle if he wants to climb the ranks at a useful time in his career. If the Tyson fight does come down, and Cappiello says he's been in close conversations with Tyson advisor Shelly Finkel, it could be close to a million-dollar payday for the fellow who sits in Greenhills, grinning, in a paint-spattered sweatshirt and double-lined pants, preposterous boots on the floor.

On Friday, it's off to New York to march in a St. Patrick's Day parade, then out to Vegas to spar with South Africa's Corrie Sanders, who's prepping to vie with Vitali Klitschko for the WBC belt Lennox Lewis tossed aside when he retired.

Unless, of course, news arrives that Tyson is ready to face off McBride, a bout that the boxing world buzzes could be as early as May.

"If I fight Mike Tyson, I have a puncher's chance," McBride says. "If I knock him out, I get a shot at the world title."