Boxing News: Mike Tyson looked a miserable and disconsolate figure as he was pushed across the tarmac at Louisville Airport in a wheelchair yesterday, with his left leg in a plaster cast after injuring his left knee during his shocking four-round defeat against Britain's Danny Williams that must end his multi-million dollar earning capacity as a boxer.

He had been offered a four-fight deal, culminating in a meeting with the World Boxing Council champion Vitali Klitschko in November next year, provided he beat Williams. Defeat brought a swift and brutal reassessment of Tyson and a statement from the promoter Bob Arum's Las Vegas office said the offer was "no longer on the table".

Tyson (38), the most instantly recognisable fighter since Muhammad Ali, is estimated to have earned more than $300 million from boxing but is now bankrupt with debts of more than $40 million. His sumptuous mansions have long since been sold along with his collection of exotic cars. Now he was flying home to Phoenix and the modest rented home in which he lives with his latest girlfriend.

By a considerable distance the self-styled "Baddest Man on the Planet" has been the highest paid boxer the sport has known, with his continuing notoriety and celebrity making him a marketable commodity long after Evander Holyfield had proved with his fists that Tyson was a fighter in decline, an impression underlined by his humiliating defeat against Lennox Lewis two years ago.

Now the show should be over, 18 years after Tyson beat Trevor Berbick to become the youngest world heavyweight champion in boxing history, although the injury might yet be presented as the get-out clause from an otherwise inevitable retirement.

Inevitable, that is, unless Tyson is prepared to demean his once fearsome reputation as an "opponent", a man who offers himself as a testing block for fighters he would once have trounced in exchange for a few thousand dollars to pay the bills.

Watching Tyson produce early vintage moments, a series of classic hooks and upper-cuts in an explosive opening round when the stunned and shaken Williams was forced to cling on to survive, it was easy to recall the man who blitzed the likes of Carl "The Truth" Williams, Michael Spinks and dear old Frank Bruno back in the '80s. But the reality of the years of dissolute living, prison terms and those bad beatings against Holyfield and Lewis perhaps contributed to what happened thereafter.

By round three Tyson was a static old fighter ready to be stretched out once more. No matter that he was ahead on the judges' cards by five points after three rounds or that the 15,000-strong crowd united for one last chant of "Tyson Tyson". He had little more to offer and Williams rained more then 20 blows on to the old champion before the end came.

With a measuring rod of a left hand, Williams appeared to steady Tyson's head before unleashing one thunderous right cross during an attack of brutal intensity before another huge right hook sent Tyson sinking to the canvas.

The man who once said he would like to drive an opponent's nose into his brain, who liked to hear men squeal like girls when he hit them and who said he would like to eat Lennox Lewis's children now blinked upwards at Williams and the referee with new found vulnerability and uncertainty.

Perhaps Tyson could have beaten the count, but for what? In his heart the fighting machine that the legendary Cus d'Amato shaped, who had alternately thrilled and appalled his audience for the better part of two decades, must have known that he no longer had what it took to repel a younger, hungrier opponent.

He is of the same vintage as the Ali who was mercilessly pounded by Larry Holmes and more or less the same age as the Joe Louis annihilated by Rocky Marciano.

Those who had admired Tyson's destructive capabilities could feel only a tinge of sadness if not pity. Williams deserves credit for maintaining his composure and delivering the performance of his career, although he spoke afterwards of Tyson's attitude during the build-up, saying that Tyson had refused to look him in the eye as they were announced to the crowd.

Perhaps he was merely going through the motions for one last time. As Williams said: "Even at the weigh-in he wouldn't look me in the eye. I don't know if he was wary of me or just wary because he'd been out of the ring for so long but he wasn't that confident in himself."

Tyson's shrewd trainer Freddie Roach has been around enough fighters to deliver his own realistic verdict on the old champion when the time comes. He will surely tell Tyson that no amount of training can ever get him back to the level of fitness necessary to ascend boxing's peaks, even allowing for the parlous state of the heavyweight division, and that he risks more painful and humiliating beatings if he hangs around any longer.

Before the fight Tyson spoke of his life with a calmness and maturity that had been as unexpected as it was welcome. The angry young fighter who once said he expected to be dead at another man's hands by the time he was 40 seemed happy. But the biggest question might now be how Tyson copes if the fighting days really are over.

Guardian Service