Goody Petronelli

First there is Goody Petronelli, the ageless Brockton trainer who was a friend of Rocky Marciano and trainer of Marvin Hagler, the great middleweight champion of the 1980s. Petronelli is a quiet sage, a calming presence, a man who has worked many fights as big as this one and who has guided greater underdogs than McBride to world title belts.

As prominent now as Petronelli is Pascal "Packie" Collins, camp coordinator. Collins is the younger brother of the last Irish champion, super middleweight Steve Collins, the Dubliner who told McBride in the late 1990s he should follow his path to success by moving to Boston and training with Petronelli in Brockton. Packie Collins has been a constant, joining McBride on a six-mile wake-up run, supervising everything from his meals to his sparring partners, and even negotiating sponsorships and handling press requests. Observers have marveled at the mastery with which Collins, still an active fighter himself, has handled the complicated business of running a tight - but still publicity-friendly - camp.

Together, Collins and Petronelli are the architects of McBride's strategy against Tyson. It involves three components that are obvious but at the same time difficult to achieve: developing the fitness to outlast the famously short burn of Tyson's fury, working on techniques to use his huge size and reach advantage, and entering the ring mentally prepared.

McBride has gotten into the best shape of his career for this fight. On top of the road and ringwork, he has been working with strength coach Radovan Serbula at a Brighton gym. He will enter the ring at his usual 260-270 pounds, but 15 pounds of flab have been replaced with functional, flexible muscle. Despite many observers' belief that the fight will not last more than four or five rounds, McBride also has trained for a grueling 10 rounds, alternating the length of sparring sessions to anticipate all possible states of fatigue.

Since taking McBride on in 1999, Petronelli's tutelage has focused on starting from his long jab and heavy straight right, but also punishing opponents with quick, hard hooks and uppercuts when they get close to him. This will be the basic approach against Tyson, but with a couple of refinements. When Tyson gets inside McBride's jab, as he inevitably will, look for McBride to have two responses. One will be to step to one side and, as Tyson follows, stun him with an uppercut combination. Danny Williams used this move successfully in his defeat of Tyson last year. Second, when Tyson clinches, McBride will lean all his weight on Tyson's upper body, wearing down the smaller man, and putting pressure on the ankle that McBride's people believe was genuinely hurt in the Williams fight.

McBride showed off his new physique and some of his technique at a public workout last week at the South Boston Boxing Club. Looking trim and powerful, he pushed sparring partner Terence Lewis around the ring with ease for four rounds, at one point even flooring him with a hard lean in the clinch.