“Ring Magazine” Fight of the Year<\/a>. While Peter McNeeley vs. Butterbean wasn't that, it was still a highly-anticipated matchup as everyone knew it wouldn't last very long. <\/p>\n\n\n\nFor one, it couldn't last very long as it was only scheduled for four rounds. After all, it was a Butterbean fight. Many thought that Peter McNeeley shouldn't even be fighting. He had been knocked out in February in Denmark by Brian Nielsen and was battling drug and alcohol addiction but, according to McNeeley himself, he was 70 days clean coming into the fight with Butterbean. Butterbean was a 10-1 favorite to start and then a 4.5-1 favorite at fight time. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
This was never going to be the prettiest fight and it wasn't. Fans wanted a brawl and that's what they got, although McNeeley actually did try to outbox his bigger opponent. The “Hurricane” was giving up 100 pounds and tried his best to stay on the outside but it didn't work. 1:20 into the fight, Butterbean connected with two big shots that rattled McNeeley. But 20 seconds later, McNeeley hit two big shots of his own, two left hooks that would drop a lot of people. But Butterbean just shook them off. With 38 seconds remaining in the first round, Butterbean swarmed and Peter McNeeley never landed another punch. Butterbean hit uppercut after uppercut but McNeeley, who was clearly dazed, never went down and actually still had his hands up when the referee stopped the fight with just one second to go in the opening round.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
McNeeley and his longtime manager, Vinny Vecchione, were stunned by the decision to stop the fight, especially with just one second on the clock. However, to this day, many still feel that the fight was stopped because referee Jay Nady had been told to keep a close eye on McNeeley because of the emotional outburst that had occurred three days earlier in the pre-fight press conference in which the “Hurricane” broke down about how his life had fallen apart after his bout with Mike Tyson. But that should have no bearing on the fight itself. Unlike the bout with Tyson, in which Vecchione jumped in the ring to protect his fighter, McNeeley could still go and it looked as if he was just trying to make it to the end of the round. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
It's obviously not clear what would have happened in the second round but the controversial decision never gave boxing fans a chance to see it. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A look back on the 1999 clash between heavyweight fighters Butterbean and Peter McNeeley that ended in controversy in the first round. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":142,"featured_media":1163109,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4898],"tags":[86910,4823],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n
The Crazy and Controversial Fight That Was Butterbean vs. Peter McNeeley<\/title>\n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n\t \n\t \n\t \n \n \n \n \n\t \n\t \n\t \n