Either way, it is hard not to believe that the curtain has come down on Mike Tyson.. America, for a multitude of reasons, has moved beyond the agonies and the tumult of one disturbed and disturbing fighter Some believe he is as mad as a hatter Worse than that, others say he is simply old hat. If Tyson, deep down, is appalled by the idea of being stripped down in public by Lewis, how better to avoid the fate than by once again playing the wild, uncontrollable warrior?It is a persuasive theory, but here in New Orleans you would win little applause for expounding it. When he gloated that his victim Tyrell Biggs, who had slighted him when they were members of the US Olympic squad, had screamed “like a girl” in a fight he claimed to have extended for the sheer pleasure of inflicting pain on a hated opponent. It is that he knows in his bones that he cannot beat Lewis and that to walk away from the fight would represent a cruel unmasking of his last strength as a fighter without a fear, a man who could at least create an echo of the days when he claimed, with some justice, that he was “the baddest man on the planet”.Those were the days when he talked cheerfully of driving a man’s nose bone into his brain. All of this was absorbed, and perhaps the last d?cle most easily of all, because it allowed him to leave the ring after facing Holyfield not as a beaten man for a second time but as a violent wrong-doer, which was something that can be accommodated more easily on the street.Now a suspicion grows, and it is the only one that makes some kind of sense of Tyson’s sabotaging of the Lewis fight.

Hard time in the Indiana prison where he did three years for rape Another jail stint in Maryland, for road rage The derision of the world when he bit Holyfield’s ears. Trial by television when his marriage to the actress Robin Givens unravelled, and he allowed himself to be dragged on to the big Barbara Walters Show, where he sat, gauche and defenceless as his character was publicly dissected. It is the one of being beaten: soundly, squarely in the ring He has known all kinds of self-inflicted humiliation. But then it is also true that Tyson had a brother who went to live in California to earn a living as a pharmacist.As Tyson waits to hear if he is to be indicted on charges of sexual harassment in Las Vegas, and as he appears incapable of controlling himself from one day to the next, it might be thought that he has become desensitised to the prospect of any disaster, a sense that is heightened by his apparent ambition to blow away the chance to earn the $20m (£14m) which would clear all his debts.But then, perhaps, there is one potential horror which has haunted him to the last days of his fighting career. She talked of rat-infested tenements, of drug dealers handing out doctored “sweeties” outside the primary school as they primed their market, and it is believed that Tyson, a lisping loner, was a victim of rape when he was sent to a reformatory.

A New York policewoman was moved to tears when she described the conditions in which Tyson grew up in Brownsville, Brooklyn. Certainly it was possible to see that in his life Tyson had received as much abuse – and manipulation – as he had delivered. A moment of insight into his own condition flashes, coruscatingly in the gloom, but soon enough he is flailing in the dark once again.The idea that he held up a mirror to the uglier side of life, that his rampaging nihilism was a source of fascination to many who operated under rather tighter restraints, was viable for a time. He says he has been off medication for six months, and was doing “magnificently” before he erupted at the New York press conference to announce the fight He rambles, often obscenely. England has been mentioned, but the chances of Home Office approval would seem remote in view of Tyson’s escapades – including an alleged assault on the promoter Frank Warren – on previous visits to Britain to fight Julius Francis and Lou Savarese.What the TV men have to consider all over again, as the Nevada commission was obliged to, is the sheer volatility of Tyson. Under the terms of the contract the fight had six possible American locations – Nevada, New York, Connecticut, New Jersey, Texas and California – but now it is felt the other states will take their lead from Nevada, the main underwriters of the boxing industry, which leaves Denmark and possibly Canada as foreign contenders. What’s left for Tyson? It hardly bears thinking about but if he stays out of jail he will just have to get someone to dig up a bum he can fight somewhere to pay some bills.”Enthusiasm for rescuing the fight is also believed to be plummeting in the New York offices of the deal-makers, Home Box Office and Showtime Television They still have a few options.

One boxing man said yesterday, “Nevada has more or less written Tyson’s obituary as a fighter, and Lewis is obviously cooling on the idea of being part of his circus He’s right to be doing so He doesn’t deserve to be caught up in this. Five years ago, the commission had the chance to say that the fighter had gone too far, but only one member had the nerve to say that, and Tyson took his relicensing not as a reprieve but as reinforcement of his belief that he could do anything without detriment to his commercial appeal.Now even that reality is near to the end of its shelf-life. Vegas decided that it couldn’t go on selling a freak show, and for Tyson and his people that was the real blow. Las Vegas, the city that lives by percentages, finally decided to cut its losses.It wasn’t much to do with nobility It was, in the final analysis, business.