On October 6th at Madison Square Garden, Andrew Golota (39-6-1, 32 KOs) faces Kevin McBride (34-5-1, 29 KOs), the man who got famous for finishing off a washed-up Mike Tyson. That’s the headline, but let’s not pretend this is anything more than two past-it heavyweights trying to squeeze one last payday out of their names.
Golota, 39, is dragging himself through a half-hearted comeback. He beat Jeremy Bates in June 2007 after two years out, but looked nothing like the fighter from ten years ago—slower, flatter, and clearly running on fumes. Bates, with a padded record and no real threat in his hands, couldn’t expose Golota. That won’t mean much here, because McBride probably can’t either.
McBride, 34, has size and not much else. His last outing was a joke—he got blasted out in two rounds by Mike Mollo, a basic slugger who walked through him like it was a sparring session. That fight ended whatever delusions McBride had of sniffing a title shot, dreams that started when he shoved a broken Tyson into retirement in 2005.
What came after that “career-defining” win? A fight with an unknown named Byron Polley, 10 months later, for peanuts. No momentum, no titles, nothing. Just a reminder that beating a finished Tyson doesn’t mean much when you’ve got no tools to back it up.
Now McBride gets another chance, not because he earned it, but because Golota needed a name to make the card look half-respectable. If McBride somehow pulls off another retirement job, it’ll be because Golota’s legs give out, not because McBride brings anything dangerous.
But make no mistake—Golota can still bang a bit. And if McBride’s chin is anywhere near as soft as it looked against Mollo, this ends fast. Neither man has a future in the division, but one of them might at least walk away with a win and a few more months of pretending there’s something left.