There is already talk of him meeting the WBO champion Lamon Brewster light-heavyweight champion Antonio Tarver conqueror of Roy Jones or

There is already talk of him meeting the WBO champion, Lamon Brewster, light-heavyweight champion Antonio Tarver, conqueror of Roy Jones or, heaven forbid, a third fight with Holyfield.The fight that could wipe out all his debts would be against the giant Ukrain-ian WBC champion, Vitali Klitschko. I sat on the kerb outside the cinema and waited for Parker to finish watching the film.As I sat there, a local chav-mobile roared past, spotted me, lunged into reverse and screeched to a halt right next to me. “He’s never looked better,” says his dutiful trainer, Freddie Roach Tyson adds: “I may be a fool, but I’m not a damned fool. Now I don’t see the point of badmouthing opponents.”Fool and felon he may be, but it says much about the state of the game that boxing still has to feed off his notoriety now that nemesis Lewis has elected to concentrate on fatherhood.Tyson hasn’t actually beaten up a meaningful opponent for 15 years yet, just as he did so tantalisingly before the Lewis fight, he seems in great shape, sporting a six-pack rather than swigging one. I’m looking forward to facing him.” But he did manage a chilling grin when told that Williams is a fighter who has problems getting his head right. “He’d better get it right on the night or he’s going to be in an awful lot of trouble.”Tyson explains his new-found tranquillity thus: “People who don’t see my ranting and raving probably don’t think I’m a hungry fighter any more But I was just a foolish person who ran away with himself. Parker is obsessed with the slide and we have to do it about 40 times before I can distract her and sneak off for a couple of pints of very strong cider.I need the alcohol because every time I go down the slide I’m thinking about the story of someone sticking razor blades to it using chewing gum.

I have no idea if this is just an urban myth but I tense, what passes for muscles in my back, as I hurtle down the thing just waiting for the blades to dice me up.I do suffer from a vivid imagination. One day he can be as nice as ninepence, the next he will tear your head off – or bite your ear off.Now he refuses to bite even when given the news that Williams was threatening to “smash him to pieces” and terms him “the dirtiest fighter who ever lived”.”Well, he’s entitled to say that Good luck to him. I’m not looking for a place in history, I’m just here to fight.”I was reckless with money and the people I trusted, a complete jackass Now I don’t have the entourage. They’ve gone, and I guess that makes me kinda ordinary.”So, more Mr Nasty Guy? With Tyson you just never know. He went walkabout after his one-round comeback against Clifford Etienne.

“I was just hanging out, I wasn’t really thinking about boxing Then one day I saw a picture of myself I saw stuff hanging off of me, and a double chin. I thought, ‘It’s time to get back into the gym.’ When it comes to it, I’m just a fighter It’s what I do. It has been a big influence on me.”Now a couple of weeks past his 38th birthday, Tyson, splattered and spreadeagled by Lennox Lewis two years ago, maintains that boxing has missed him more than the other way round. He has blown $300m (“it might have been more, I never counted it”) and now he is $25m in the red, which is the main reason he’s back in the hurt business, complete with a tattoo half-circling his left eye that makes him like an understudy for Shrek.”When I had money, I was an animal,” he reflects “My life has been a total waste. Although in a different manner.Tyson’s victim Julius Francis may have sold the soles of his boxing boots for £30,000 but Tyson, by his own admission, sold his soul to the devil “It’s true,” he says “I’ve slept with the devil I’m addicted to chaos.

I know I was a tough, bad-ass-talking fighter but I ain’t no mob figure. I did my time, I paid my dues.”So, after 17 months out of the ring the man in black returns to fight his fourth Briton, an opponent who some reckon is as much a headcase as Tyson himself. “Don’t rob me of my hate, it’s all I have left,” he once said, quoting Alexandre Dumas.In that hate-filled past Tyson has served time for rape, bitten off Evander Holyfield’s ear, tried to break Frans Botha’s arm and threatened to eat Lennox Lewis’s children after gnawing on his leg He has raged on the road and brawled in the streets. Tyson was calm, composed and apparently at ease with himself as he discussed the upcoming fight, his turbulent past and his clouded future on the apron of the ring at the Central Boxing Club near downtown Phoenix, Arizona.This was not Mad Mike, but Mellow Mike, a reminder to those who have charted his chequered career since he became the world’s youngest heavyweight champion at 20 that on a good day he can be a gentleman as well as something of a scholar. What’s more, as he says himself, he’s still crazy after all these years “I’m a maniac.