Head and shoulders above

If boxing is 90 percent mental, Kevin McBride has it covered.

The Irish heavyweight champion fighting out of Brockton and living in Dorchester will face the biggest and potentially most devastating challenge of his career June 11 when he journeys to Washington to face Mike Tyson in what is arguably a must-win fight for both. Tyson will be surrounded by a posse of hard cases. McBride will come with his hypnotist.

The man still known in his native Ireland as ''The Clones Colossus" has been preparing for Tyson not only physically, but mentally, training his body three times a day and training to believe in himself by attending sessions with a local hypnotist who fills his head with the power of positive thinking.

McBride has not faced Tyson but he's stopped him night after night in his mind. Stood over Tyson as he lay on the floor. Taken his best shots and returned fire until his hand is raised. He has, in other words, visualized success. Now all he has to do is make it reality.

McBride rises at 6 a.m. to run 6 miles with Paschal Collins, younger brother of former world champion Steve Collins, through Brockton's D.W. Field Park. In the afternoon, he spars at Goody Petronelli's Gym, the same Brockton lair where Marvelous Marvin Hagler used to train. In the evening, he attends strength and conditioning workouts with Radovan Serbula at his Brighton gym. But the 32-year-old former Irish Olympian doesn't stop there, for there is more to beating Tyson than having a strong body.

You need a strong mind to overcome the myth of Tyson and that's where a hypnotist fits into McBride's plans for an upset.

''That's my secret weapon," said the 6-foot-6-inch McBride yesterday. ''It's good to be around confident people. It's good to talk with confident people. To become a champion, you need that confidence. Hypnotists say all the right things to you.

''I want to be 100 percent ready for this fight and I'm willing to work with anybody to be 100 percent ready. I know there's a lot of negativity out there about my chances but I'm not reading the papers or listening to the media. I'm getting ready to beat Mike Tyson on a world stage."

That is no longer the difficult feat it used to be, but Tyson remains a heavy favorite. McBride has lost only once since coming to the United States to train in 1999, a fifth-round TKO at the hands of DaVarryl Williamson in Las Vegas just over three years ago. Since, McBride has won seven straight against the dregs of the heavyweight division.

The Tyson he will be facing is a 38-year-old shadow of himself. Once a fistic terror, Tyson remains a brooding presence in the division and a devastating puncher for two or three rounds, but he's been knocked out in two of his last three fights, including last July 30, a fight that should have been McBride's.

McBride had agreed to the bout when money demands priced him out at the 11th hour. Instead, a big British heavyweight named Danny Williams agreed to accept $100,000 less than McBride. Williams knocked out Tyson in the fourth round, although Tyson claimed a knee injury early in the fight had limited his mobility.

Whatever the excuse, Tyson ended up flat on his bottom, staring up with clear but bloody eyes as he let the referee count him out. Tyson was able but unwilling to get up, stretching one leg out in front of him and resting his fist on the other knee as he was counted out.

McBride understands that should have been his night, but it has finally come nearly a year later. A long year for McBride, who has been inactive for 15 months while trying to get his mind back into boxing.

McBride's mind is back into boxing after a fifth-round KO of Kevin Montiy March 18.

''I want to become the first Irish heavyweight to win the world title," McBride said yesterday during a press conference at The Kells in Brighton. ''I've been training, running, lifting weights. I never thought I could lift Mike Tyson's weight 20 times over my head, but now I can. Mike Tyson doesn't intimidate me at all. I idolized the man growing up but when I hit Mike Tyson, he's going to think the whole of Ireland hit him on the chin."

Whether that was a hypnotist speaking or a hit man, it sounded pretty good. If it sounds the same at the MCI Center in three weeks, who knows? It may be boom time for hypnotists as well as heavyweights after that.