Kevin McBride was left pondering retirement after a lop-sided loss to fleet-footed Polish heavyweight Tomasz Adamek at the Prudential Center in Newark, N.J., last Saturday. "Unless there's an opportunity to fight for a world title or a big name like Evander Holyfield would like to fight me in Ireland, I will retire," McBride told the Echo after failing to pry the IBF International and WBO NABO belts from Adamek. "It's getting hard to get up for fights." The "Clones Colossus," all 6-foot-6inches of him, was certainly up for Adamek but found sorely lacking in the speed department. For 12 rounds, McBride [35-9-1, 29 KOs] futilely pursued the elusive Pole [44-1, 28 KOs] around the ring while getting repeatedly hammered in return. All three judges had the crowd favorite running away by scores of 119-108 [twice] and 120-107. "The guy was fast. I needed a bicycle to catch him," McBride, spotting a cut above his left eye, said. "He has a lot of speed and there is a bit of power." The latter was supposed to be his main advantage against a man five and a half inches shorter and 70 pounds lighter. But Adamek's movement and speed effectively negated that and the puncher's chance that was McBride's best bet for success. "The plan we had for Kevin McBride we executed perfectly," said Roger Bloodworth, Adamek's trainer. "He put on the perfect show." As expected, Adamek's strategy involved nonstop movement. From the first round, after taking a jolting left uppercut during a rare toe-to-toe exchange with McBride, the Pole boxed and moved. It was a clinic on how to fight a big man made easier by McBride's lack of speed and nonexistent jab. Adamek would jab, double jab and sometimes throw left hooks before landing straight rights and then sliding away to the delight of the partisan 7,653 crowd. By the third round, the "Clones Colossus," whose connects were far and few in between, had been reduced to a plodding giant. He was cut on top of the head in the fifth but punctuated a rough and tumble sixth stanza with a right cross at the bell. "None of his punches hurt me," Adamek later said. In the seventh, the Pole seemingly went for the jugular, tattooing McBride with hard shots. The result of his handiwork was a cut above McBride's left eye that was never a factor in the match. In the so-called championship rounds when only a knockout could have saved McBride, it was Adamek backing up the giant Irishman back with a left hook in the tenth and then closing the show in the final heat with some vicious body shots. McBride, who's 37 and best remembered for retiring Mike Tyson in 2005, had no qualms with the defeat, his fifth loss in his last six outings. "I thought I could catch him later on, but I couldn't get him. I wish I had another 12 rounds; maybe I could have caught him. "Maybe if I lost 20 more pounds, I could have caught him. Speed kills and he has a lot of speed. I respect the man. I knew I was being hit." Said the 34 year-old Adamek, whose next fight could be against Vitali Klitschko for the World Boxing Council title in September: "This was a very good test. I hit him hard, but I just needed to stay quick. To me, speed is power."
PROUD MOMOne person not disappointed with McBride's performance was his mother, Marian McBride, who flew in from County Monaghan with daughter Debbie to watch her son fight. "It was a good fight -- he done well," she noted.
