It's always showtime with Iron Mike

AMERICA AT LARGE: Here I was, on the phone with Judy, my travel agent, pleading with her to reinstate the plane ticket to Memphis I'd just phoned up and ordered her to cancel an hour earlier. She wondered, quite reasonably, whether I'd taken leave of my senses.

"No," I replied. "But I think Mike Tyson just came to his."

Not eight hours after his handlers had thrown in the towel and issued a statement apologising for the cancellation of Saturday night's bout against Clifford Etienne, Tyson experienced an apparent change of heart on Tuesday morning and decided he wanted to fight the Black Rhino after all.

Then, by the time Tyson arrived in Memphis, Etienne had experienced a mood swing of his own and was telling people he would refuse to fight.

Come on, Judy. You think I could make this stuff up?

A week ago the former heavyweight champion, in the words of trainer Freddie Roach, "went off the deep end", and turned into a more familiar incarnation of himself. Not for the first time, Tyson's life appeared to be in tatters and his future clouded after a tumultuous week in which the onetime "baddest man on the planet" bolted camp, stopped training, and, by some accounts, went on a gluttonous rampage. And, oh, yes, somewhere along the line Mike also got his face tattooed.

Although the first public indications that all was not well came last Saturday, when a doctor was called in to examine Tyson after he developed either (take your pick) bronchitis or the flu, camp insiders had been aware of problems for several days. Roach, who had been working with Tyson since St Stephen's Day, described Iron Mike as a model pupil, but a bit over a week ago Tyson abruptly stopped showing up at the gym. The next time anybody saw him, Mike was sporting a grotesque tattoo ("some tribal thing", Roach described it; amateur anthropologists insist it is Micronesian in origin) around his left eye.

Informed speculation has it that Tyson likely "flipped" when he stopped taking his psychotropic medication, as has been his practice in the days leading up to a fight.

"He must have," said Roach. "It was a complete turnabout. Everything was going great, and all of a sudden he went off the deep end."

The flu-like symptoms or bronchitis, whichever it was, proved a fortuitous development from the standpoint of Roach and promoter Gary Shaw, who flew to Las Vegas last Saturday to have the diagnosis confirmed by a private physician. The pair might appear to have been acting out of concern for Tyson's well-being, but a bit of self-interest was at stake as well: by obtaining an independent diagnosis, they were concomitantly indemnifying themselves from the onslaught of lawsuits a cancellation would have prompted.

While a reaction to medication, or lack of it, was the most likely explanation for Tyson's bizarre behaviour, the boxer was also reportedly upset when he learned that he would be fighting Etienne virtually for free, even though this was common knowledge throughout the boxing community. Every time Tyson fights he is not only paying off the Internal Revenue Service for past transgressions, but a hefty cut is also targeted for Showtime, which has advanced him millions, and his ex-wife, Dr Monica Tyson, whose divorce settlement gives her a cut of his future earnings.

The former heavyweight champion might have been upset to learn that his $5 million purse for Saturday night's bout has been largely earmarked for his creditors, but once the bottom line was explained to him it sounded even more ominous: had Tyson not gone through with the Memphis fight, June's planned rematch with Lennox Lewis would likely also have gone by the boards, taking with it Tyson's last hope for economic solvency.

IN any case, the fight at the Pyramid in Memphis is back on again, and Tyson, after a final work-out in Las Vegas yesterday afternoon, flew to the Tennessee city on Tuesday night, only to find Etienne vacillating.

After a week of erratic behaviour, Tyson evidently woke up on the right side of bed.

"He hadn't run in almost a week," reported Roach. "But he got up at 5:30 and ran (Tuesday) morning like nothing had happened. Then he called me up and told me he wanted to fight."

"But Mike," Roach asked him, "are you ready to fight?"

"F*** this motherf***er," said Tyson, "I'm going to knock him out. What I need to know is: are you, as my trainer, going to be with me."

Roach had his bags packed to return to Los Angeles, but he told Tyson: "I'll be there."

Exasperated though they may have become by Tyson's mercurial behaviour, Showtime executives were only too happy to return the Memphis fight to Saturday's airtime schedule. The network had a substantial outlay involved, and wasn't anxious to start issuing refunds.

After Tyson's turnabout, The Black Rhino enacted one of his own, announcing his refusal to participate on the grounds that he would not be "Mike Tyson's yo-yo". Etienne's position is that the postponement led him to break training and that he is no longer prepared to box on Saturday night. Since the official cancellation came late on Monday night and the reinstatement before noon the next day, it seems unlikely The Black Rhino missed any work-outs, so there are really only two possibilities. Either Etienne saw the chaos as a means of shaking down the promoters for an increase in his $1 million purse, or he partied so hard on Monday night he was afraid somebody might try to collect a urine specimen from him.

Like Tyson, Etienne is also an ex-convict, but unlike Tyson, he is still on parole in Louisiana. The wrong number on a drug test could put him back on the chain gang.

If Etienne can not be persuaded to fight, Shaw and Showtime have a short list of four suitably inept opponents ready to step into the breech. The show will go on.

Given Tyson's comportment over the past week, the latest turn of events was nearly as startling as his earlier inexplicable transformation.

"It is," chuckled Roach. "What a crazy business, huh?"

Funny, I told him. My travel agent just said the same thing.

Only Judy wasn't smiling.