There were some people I didn’t train for but I never underestimated Frank Bruno, and always prepared for fights with him. Bruno was not a person I could take lightly.”Both those fights came at important times in my life. Frank was a great challenger, a braver and much better fighter than he was given credit for He is a beautiful person. I wish him all the best and I’m looking forward to seeing him again.”All that happened in my boxing careeer is behind me now That was Mike Tyson the fighter.

Now I’m more like Mike Tyson, citizen of the world”.So, is it to be Tyson the global ambassador? Since announcing his retirement he has visited several countries, exchanging playful punches with presidents and punters, hobnobbed with VIPs as the celebrity guest on a cruise and even considering, but rejecting he says, a career in porn movies.But trouble seems always at his elbow. Only last week he was detained by police in Argentina for allegedly attacking a photographer who was taking pictures of him in a nightclub He was released without charge. Left as a shattered shell of the fighter he once was, first by Lennox Lewis, then Danny Williams and latterly Kevin McBride, Tyson now fights to rehabilitate himself out of the ring His speaking tour is part of that programme. But there are those who can neither forgive nor forget his past.Yet he must know he can never return to normality For one thing there is the appalling state of his finances He is flat broke despite having earned around £200m Most of his debt is to the US tax authorities. Small wonder then, that the Inland Revenue here is insisting on deducting his UK tax at source.As someone who has followed Tyson’s turbulent 20-year career I would add schizophrenic to those labels hung around his neck. Catch him on a good day and you have a charming, articulate man who will discourse deeply not only on the history of boxing but on racing pigeons and the great military leaders of history.On his bookshelf you will find The Ultimate Encyclopaedia of Mythology alongside AJ Liebling’s The Sweet Science.Charming? Yes Intellingent? Certainly But dark qualities have always lurked within his skull.

On a bad day, any discussion can prove dangerous, with the eye-flashing threat of bellicose behaviour Like Bruno, he has never seemed comfortable with himself. “I hate myself so much, you can’t hate me as much as I hate myself,” he once said.For a time, Tyson, like Muhammad Ali, transcended sport but once he was shown he was no invincible Colossus he lost more than titles With them went his friends, his women and his self-respect. He was no longer the monster of popular mythology, the one-man threshing machine who made opponents sweat with fear – Bruno, it must be said, among them.Of course he was by no means the first heavyweight champion fighter to go from rags to riches and back. It happened to his idol, Joe Louis, who never had the excuse of spending £100,000 on two white Bengal tigers and a similar amount for their trainer to be on call “Everyone in boxing makes, but not the boxer,” he once said. Yet the last time he came to Britain he forked out almost £1m on a watch. His whole life has wavered between poverty and ostentation.That inability to control himself in and out of the ring has proved costly in every sense. His basic insecurity meant he was constantly surrounded by people beholden to him, but none remain on the payroll, doubtless because there isn’t one.

“I learned that most of them didn’t give a fuck about me,” he said. “Now I just want to be myself again.”In a way, this plaintive sentiment echoes that of the man who will be his verbal sparring partner this week. It will be an intriguing return to the spotlight for both, but especially for the main man, Tyson The baddie is back centre ring. But at least this time he will be bending ears, not biting them, writes Michael Gerard.ROOTS: In 1966, in the notorious Brownsville neighbourhood of Brooklyn, Mike Tyson was born. He passed in and out of juvenile detention centres, and was expelled from high school. Things looked bleak until Cus D’Amato discovered him.PURSES: No other boxer came close to matching the profile Tyson has in the late 1980s and 1990s.