It was short and sweet, thank God

It's all over, thanks be to God. It was cruel and violent and swift but mercifully bloodless - and, so, after all the hype and shameless over-the-top build-up from our friends in Sky Sports, life can return to a semblance of normality, if that is a word that can ever be used in association with one Mike Tyson.

These days, Tyson is a marketing tool. Older and fatter than in his boxing heyday, the mystique has grown because of his notoriety. Why else would people pay to view him fight a nobody in a non-title bout? You could say that we - anyone who forked out the readies to view the fight on Sky Box Office - were all conned by the sportsbrokers, or that the aura of professional boxing and its shady underworld is weirdly irresistible.

The truth is that Tyson stands for all that is worse and best about pugilism, and therein lies the fatal attraction.

His life is a contradiction. A convicted rapist, a road bully and a boxer who imitates Hannibal Lecter's cravings, it is a touch bizarre that he should also spout on about family values and shout prayers to Mohammed. His unpredictability, in life as much as in the ring, is part of the allure.

Tyson's first words to the perplexed interviewer after his mismatch win over Julius Francis on Saturday night confirmed his mixed-up mind: he expressed gratitude to Jack Straw, the British minister who flew in the face of women's opinion to allow him to fight in Manchester, and then sent out salutations to the Kray family, Britain's infamous criminals. It got to the stage where Jim Gray, the man with the microphone, was more concerned about what was coming out of the boxer's nose than the words coming out of his mouth. "Wipe your nose, you've got some stuff coming out of there," he interjected.

Brave man, speaking to Iron Mike like that.

Of course, Julius Francis never had a chance of beating Tyson. Paul Dempsey went through the motions of asking the pundits to make predictions. "He (Tyson) wants to get this out of the way," said Marvin Hagler, who proved that boxers can talk sense after a career in the ring. "He'll knock him out in either the first or second round, most probably the second," he added.

Barry McGuigan has been around the Sky studios for so long that he knows his paymasters like to dangle some bait in front of the viewers. So, he did his best to make like it wouldn't be totally one-sided affair. "If Tyson loses his cool again, anything can happen," claimed McGuigan, before rediscovering his more pragmatic self and insisting it wouldn't go beyond "three or four rounds."

Co-commentator Glenn McCrory sparred for 96 rounds with Tyson in his own boxing career. "There's an aura about him . . . he can be scary," said McCrory. Would he be tested? "He doesn't see this as a challenge at all, it's not a big test for him," replied McCrory, and with that anyone who had paid out to view the fight wondered why they had bothered.

Earlier, referee Roy Francis had been interviewed and said that none of Tyson's transgressions in the ring in the past would cloud his judgment. When it came time for the two fighters to go eyeball-toeyeball, the referee said: "Let's have a clean contest and I wish you the best of luck. Shake hands, shake hands." Neither boxer volunteered to shake hands and it was left to the referee to grab gloves and touch them off each other.

That was almost as close as Franics came to landing a glove on Tyson. If the build-up to the bout had been long, drawn out and lacking in taste, the fight itself was short and violent.

"Everyone's here to see some of the Mike Tyson of old," said McCrory, "to see some of that power." They didn't have to wait long. Francis was downed twice in the first round and the wonder is that he survived at all. As he crashed to the floor for the fifth time in all one minute and three seconds into the second round, the referee called time and halted the savage assault.

Tyson had delivered, and Sky were happy.

"He looked the business," said Darke. "Ok, it was a mismatch against a boxer from a long way down the league table in world boxing, but you couldn't have asked more for the way he did it."

Certainly, nobody could question Francis's bravery - but you do have to question the promoters who could whip the bout into a genuine contest. "My objective was to go in there and bang him out," said Tyson afterwards, which is exactly what he did do. And, then, another brief insight into the other Tyson, the man searching fruitlessly for normality. "I don't want to be a superstar, I'll leave that to Madonna . . . I just want to be able to go out and get a pizza," he added.

After getting his 15 minutes of fame, you wondered if Francis had got one too many belts to his head. Asked by ringside interviewer Adam Smith why he kept getting back up - after being repeatedly punched onto the seat of his pants and giving his advertisers on the sole of his boots value for money - he replied: "I believed I could win the fight!"

The nature of professional boxing, especially with Tyson involved, is that a quick finish to a fight is always a genuine prospect. But it doesn't mean a reduction in the pay-to-view rates. That's the price of bigtime boxing in this modern age. Is it worth it? Enough people obviously believe it is.