Tortured life story turns Tyson into the street Voltaire

Former world champion consumed by fight to pay off debts and desire to regain title as he prepares to dispatch 'Danish Pastry'

Rivulets of sweat are forming on the shaven head of Mike Tyson and a ghetto blaster is pounding against the walls of the hot, downtown gym. It is Tyson, aged 35, in a time warp, but only until he considers the violent sweep of his chaotic, "sporadic" life. Then, as he has done so often down the pain-filled, volcanic years he utters something astounding.

"Yes," he says with a mournful shake of his head, "time flies and where does it leave you? Old too soon, smart too late."

But then, who knows, there might just be a few things he can change before boxing has to be "thrown out of the window". Certainly the pounding he earlier gave to the pads held by his beleaguered assistant trainer, Stacey McKinlay, Tyson delivering combinations of impressive speed and power, said that local hero Brian Nielsen, the "opponent" here in the Parken Stadium on Saturday night, is probably the least of the former world champion's current problems.

Tyson lawyers have to resolve another claim that their client has committed rape and the fighter makes no secret of the fact that his $7m fee will be consumed by his debt to the American television company Showtime. One executive is asked how long Tyson is tied to the company and says: "Until the end of time, which unfortunately might not be too long."

It is a macabre reference to the state of the world, but it could be as easily applied to the tortured private one that Tyson has occupied for so long. He lumps all of the disasters together: the betrayals, the prison terms, the broken marriages, the disgrace of the ear-biting episode, the loss of his boxing licence, the wild spending on friends whose names he can no longer bear to hear, the deaths of his mother, sister and mentors in his youth, the tax bills and his status now as a fighter obliged to perform when his creditors say so.

"Hey, I'm a wild guy, you all know that," says Tyson. "I'm fed up of being falsely accused of things but I know I've put myself in a position to be accused. I can only agree I've made a lot of my own problems, but if you do get smart you can make your life easier. I've always got in bullshit but I'm tired of all the crap and I want to get it all together.

"I want to go out as the champion of world, like I started 15 years ago, and then I want to do some other things. I can't see myself as a trainer, shouting at fighters. Maybe I'll spend some time with my children. So far I haven't been too good a father.

"But first I have to do some things in the ring. I'm probably fitter now than at any time since I came out of prison," he adds, "and when you feel fit, when you can walk around the block without huffing for breath, you feel you can do anything in my line of work. Boxing has never been a problem, I can always focus on a fight. It's what I like to do. I have a situation here which I need to handle well, and then when I have done that I can take one or two opportunities and get on with the rest of my life."

His favourite option is to fight Hasim Rahman early next year if the World Boxing Council and International Boxing Federation champion makes a successful defence against Lennox Lewis in November. "I think Rahman's style would suit me fine," he says. "but I'm prepared to fight anybody. If Evander Holyfield wins back his title against John Ruiz I would like fight him, but he's not looking too good lately."

Tyson is in no immediate hurry to return to America. He says he may "hang out" in Europe for a month or so. Or go to China. Who ever knows with Mike Tyson? One minute he babbles incoherently, talks about eating the unborn children of Lennox Lewis. The next he is summing up the tragedy of his life with the touch of a neighbourhood Voltaire. "Old too soon, smart too late," is the kind of haunting phrase which leaps from his lips as dramatically as any of the punches which used to waste the toughest of his opponents.

He is no less profound on the subject of America's trauma, personalising it as eloquently as any essayist in the New Yorker. "I grew up with those buildings," he says. "I called them the Twin Towers even though I had no idea what they were. I would look over at them when I went to my pigeon coop on the roof at home in Brooklyn. They stood taller than anything, even the Empire State Building, and it's just weird that they are longer there. It's overwhelming. I haven't been home to New York. It's under siege and I don't want that experience. I've never been scared of anything in life but now I find there are guys out there who say: 'I'm going to kill you and I don't care if I kill myself.' That scares me."

So if America is facing up to a moment of the bleakest truth, so too perhaps is one of its most violent sons. He says he knows that time is short, and that he has much chaos through which to wade. Nielsen, who is known here with some affection as the "Danish Pastry", cannot be guaranteed to provide too much resistance, but then Tyson's most formidable opponent has always been himself.

Jay Bright, Tyson's assistant trainer and friend from boyhood who also grew up under the tutelage of the famous old fight man Cus D'Amato in a wood frame house overlooking the river Hudson in upstate New State, is still optimistic about the child criminal who survived Brooklyn's most dangerous streets. "If Mike can remember the principles laid down by Cus, he can still go out as champion of the world," Bright declares. "He still has the talent – and the will."

Maybe, maybe not, but whatever happens Tyson says he will not be surprised. "If you go through enough situations," he says, "you learn to go from moment to moment. You do the best you can. I can't talk about the future too well because I know myself. I can get myself up for the moment, for the fight. That has been my life."

It is one, Tyson has made clear once again, that never encouraged a sense of permanence, and that was so long before the buildings that framed the safe harbour of his pigeon loft fell down.