Just Don’t Call Him Loser Mcneeley’s Life Hardly A Picnic ‘

The 79 seconds of fame have become 16 months of infamy, darkening Hurricane Peter McNeeley’s face beneath the 5 o’clock shadow. He is sitting gazing into the mediocrity of the South Shore Boxing Club, where he is not training for a weekend fight that his manager later canceled.

He’s got the flu, he says, and his voice is thick. Beneath the Showtime jacket, his stomach is, too. His rap sheet is expanding as well. Somehow, the brave guy who went into the ring with Mike Tyson and actually tried to win has become the bad guy - guilty of breaking a beer bottle over a man’s head, speeding tickets and other violations in the fast lane.

McNeeley has been vilified at every appearance. He’s 5-1 since Tyson, getting stopped by one Louis Monaco in the fifth round in Denver. Monaco earlier was stopped in one round by Butterbean.

“Monaco didn’t beat me,” says McNeeley. “The altitude did.”

Yeah, he’s gone through rough times, but he says he also managed to graduate from college as a political science and history major at Bridgewater State.

“That don’t make the wires,” he says. “Or when I go out shopping and buy $3,000 worth of toys for Toys for Tots. I understand. That stuff doesn’t sell newspapers.”

He sold millions when he fought Tyson. And at least he “fought.”

“Tyson blinked at Bruce Seldon during the pre-fight introductions and Seldon fell down,” says McNeeley with disgust.

Still, if boxing is wrestling, McNeeley is a villain - “bad guy slash thug,” he says.

His biggest payday would be against Butterbean, the hero of undercards.

“I like him,” he says. “I met him and he’s a down-to-earth guy, just a regular guy like me.”

Vinnie (Curly) Vecchione strolls by, checking up on his tiger.

“Hey, is this going to be a story about what a good guy he is?” says the trainer from central casting. “Can it. Don’t spoil his image.”

It’s been 16 months since Vecchione entered the ring and rescued the Hurricane from Tyson in the opening round. Vecchione couldn’t protect him from the hard knocks that followed.

There’s still a Hurricane Hotline, and every day McNeeley has to take the verbal abuse from what his father calls “screwballs.”

Vecchione got his tiger a pizza commercial, the whole works. McNeeley’s first fight after Tyson, the Boston crowd threw pizza crust at him. Now there’s a movie offer, says McNeeley, “about Boston organized crime. I’d play a bad guy, a bodyguard.”

He’s been drinking lite beer, he says, though one mutual partygoer reports his favorite booze is “whatever is left over in other people’s glasses.”

“Let’s just say I didn’t spend my time resting as I should’ve been,” counters McNeeley, who was out spending a good part of his $600,000 Tyson haul.

McNeeley was a perfect foil for the comebacking and rusty ex-champion. He was a white “world-ranked” contender who couldn’t fight, except McNeeley didn’t know that, so he tried his darnedest.

At the first sign of trouble, Vecchione had decided, the bout would be stopped.

“I was getting blamed for something Curly did,” says McNeeley. “I didn’t stop that fight. But the one thing you gotta say about me, I’m loyal. Vinny got me there, he protected me and looked after me from Day One, and he still is.”

Tom McNeeley’s presence in the gym is an endorsement of his son. The old man has been with Alcoholics Anonymous for 30 years, the last 11 of which it’s worked. When Peter was drinking, he said he stayed away “to show my disapproval.”

The Hurricane explodes at that. He lives with his mother, not his father, he says, as if the old man knows nothing about it. Divorced and both remarried, the parents are closer now, Tom says, because of “Peter’s problems.”

“Hey, I had 44 pro fights in five years, 37 in the first 44 months. I was worn out,” says Peter. “Then, out of nowhere, my mom comes down with cancer. She had a kidney removed.”

The speeding ticket wasn’t his first, because it meant loss of license, which meant he couldn’t get to the gym here. He was hit by a drunken driver crossing the street. A flu became pneumonia. “I was depressed about my mom, about me, about not getting to the gym, about losing that fight,” he says. “But hey, I got 41 wins (against three losses). I’m no loser.”