TYSON VS. MCNEELEY : How Rocky Can It Get? : McNeeley Will Come Out Swinging Against Tyson

Meaty, moody, big and bouncy, Peter McNeeley brings a strutting, head-butting roller-derby sensibility to this otherwise matter-of-fact heavyweight fight.

Although even Vinnie Vecchione, his cagey manager, shrugs and grins when asked if McNeeley will defeat Mike Tyson on Saturday night at the MGM Grand, and although McNeeley was hand-picked to give Tyson a ridiculously easy target in Tyson’s first fight in four years, the 26-year-old native of Medfield, Mass., has embraced his situation--and six-figure payday--with fervor.

Blithely ignoring that almost nobody cares what he says or does until he is propelled violently toward the canvas, McNeeley has taken on a mascot role, complete with goofy smiles, talk-show appearances, and snarling flex-for-the-camera poses.

“I’m carrying this fight,” McNeeley said this week. “I’m not sequestered somewhere. I’m not hiding. I’m the people’s champion. As you’ve seen on Leno and Letterman, this is my shot to show the world what Peter McNeeley is all about.

“I’m not a ‘Rocky’ story. I earned my shot here. I wasn’t just picked out of a book. I’m everything ‘Rocky’ was not. I’m college educated, I can put two syllables together, and I’m well managed.”

Listen to Pete belt out a station promo for a New England sportscaster during a satellite TV tour. Watch Pete don sunglasses and stroll through the media room without his shirt.

Wednesday, sounding as if he wanted to inject a little life into a typically drawn-out Don King news conference, McNeeley ripped into anybody who criticized his blatantly puffed up record, revved up the engines again and ended his statement with verse:

“I’m Peter McNeeley

“From Medfield, Mass.

“Watch me Saturday night

“When I kick Tyson’s . . . “

In June, before a decidedly hostile audience in Harlem, McNeeley predicted he would knock out Tyson in the third round.

All in all, McNeeley is doing everything King and the Tyson camp hoped he would: Be personable, promotable and, once the opening bell sounds Saturday, imminently beatable, even for a formerly great heavyweight with four years of ring rust to shake.

McNeeley’s standard style, if you can call it that, is to use his thick, 222-pound, 6-foot-2 body to charge into the middle of the ring at the opening bell, catch his foe off guard, and swing until the guy falls down.

That is not likely to overwhelm Tyson or anybody with a modicum of experience in the heavyweight division, but McNeeley’s camp agrees it is the only chance he has.

“Do I think that he’s going to win? I think that he’s going to catch Mike Tyson off balance?” Vecchione said. “I think he’s going to catch Mike Tyson in a situation where Mike isn’t really ready for the aggressiveness of this type of fighter.

“This is not the fight the Tyson camp should’ve taken. I’m sure they took him because he’s aggressive and he’s going to be right in front of Mike. But let me tell you something: As a trainer and a manager, I would’ve taken somebody that can box and not hit as hard as this kid.”

McNeeley is 36-1 with 30 knockouts, but only five of his opponents have won more fights than they’ve lost, and his opponents’ combined record when he fought them was 205-441-21.

How careful was Vecchione in constructing McNeeley’s record? He has beaten a guy who hadn’t fought in 15 years, beaten 10 other guys who hadn’t won a fight, and, in his last bout April 22, beat a guy who had lost 67 times in 83 professional bouts.

His one loss was at the hands of Stanley Wright on Feb. 18, 1994, when McNeeley suffered a cut and the fight was stopped in the eighth round.

“Every fighter has fought opponents of lesser skills,” King said. “But few have fought opponents of lesser skills with greater skill than Peter McNeeley.”

Said McNeeley: “Vinnie Vecchione and myself have done a masterful job, a textbook job of picking my opponents. All the guys throughout history have done the same thing. Muhammad Ali did it. George Foreman did it. Joe Frazier, Larry Holmes. . . . And even Mike Tyson did it.

“We did it because we didn’t have better funding [to pay higher-profile fighters]. All those other [up-and-coming] heavyweights, Shannon Briggs, Jeremy Williams, Dan Dancuta, they’re fighting all the same faces, but they’re hiding on undercards doing it. . . . I’ve done all the same things everybody else has done through history.”

Vecchione, a friend of King’s close associate, Al Braverman, had been positioning McNeeley for years, sensing that his personality and ring ferocity were worth the investment as McNeeley, who didn’t start boxing until he was 18, developed.

Before this bout, McNeeley’s biggest purse was $10,000. According to papers filed with the Nevada Athletic Commission, his official purse for this bout is $540,000--compared to the filed numbers of $25 million for Tyson.

With McNeeley’s family background--his father, Tom, was beaten by Floyd Patterson for the heavyweight title in 1961--and knowing what the Tyson camp was looking for in his comeback bout, Vecchione immediately campaigned for McNeeley-Tyson once talks to put McNeeley in against World Boxing Council champion Oliver McCall fell apart.

“There was a lot of publicity angles, I just thought it was a great opportunity,” said Vecchione, who turned down relatively big purses to fight other higher profile names recently. “Yeah, I brought this kid along properly, one step at a time.”

And, if, by some chance, McNeeley should lose Saturday, does he have a future?

“No problem,” Vecchione said. “He’s 26 years old. He’s got a great future. He will have lost to one of the top fighters in the country. Probably within four to five months, he’ll fight back in Boston.

“I’ll be sure to get him the right opponent, probably move on from there. I’d like to see him in with the likes of some of the young champions today, either the kid from Germany [Axel Schulz] or Francois Botha, who McNeeley dislikes intensely, or McCall, it doesn’t really matter.

“After we come to this stage of his career, this is something he needed to get into a world heavyweight title, and I think that will happen within a year.”