By Jim Litke
The Associated Press

Iron Mike Tyson shows Clifford Etienne the straight right. Nite-nite, Clifford. (AP photo) | ZOOM |

If boxing had truth-in-advertising laws, Clifford Etienne would have entered the ring against Mike Tyson with a mattress strapped to his back.

Of course, the same could be said about all but two of the dozen fighters Iron Mike has run up against since his release from prison in 1995. And those two, Evander Holyfield and Lennox Lewis, both exposed Tyson as the desperate, washed-up fighter he's been ever since.

But that's almost besides the point, isn't it?

If people only cared about his boxing skills, the only Tyson fights they'd watch are on ESPN Classic. And even there, only a handful are worth watching. Ferocious as Tyson was, and still is at age 36, he has never won heroically and never really beat anyone he wasn't supposed to.

Yet he still cons people into paying to watch him fight a succession of rag-dolls, fainting Englishmen, hypochondriacs and Danish pastry - Orlin Norris, Julius Francis, Andrew Golota and Brian Nielsen, respectively - when the outcome is never really in doubt. The only mystery Saturday night was why Etienne got $1 million to show up when a cardboard cutout would have worked just as well.

"This was the way I had to fight him," Etienne said. "How else could I fight him? I'm OK. He caught me with a good punch."

Tyson's genius isn't in his fists, anymore, and hasn't been for a while. It's in his ability stay out of jail, the court system and strip clubs long enough to promote his bouts and then climb between the ropes on payday.

Tyson may be mad in every sense of the word, but even in his darkest moments, he can apparently still do the math: For 49 seconds of work, he made $5 million - or slightly better than $100,000 per second.

"I canceled too many fights in my career," he said. "I wasn't afraid. He needed the money. I always need money."

Still, after Saturday night, it's worth asking how much longer even a gullible public will support Iron Mike's habit. When this fight was first announced, only the most hardcore Tyson fans even noticed. And there was no growing clamor as it neared, at least not until Iron Mike admitted that he was as uninterested in the possibilities as the rest of us - and then started acting that way. He skipped training, turned up in a strip club, got a tattoo.

"I like doing other things," Tyson explained afterward. "I like getting high, hanging out with my kids, I like drinking. I like doing other things."

Though everything else Tyson does casts doubt on how long boxing will stay near the top of his list, none of the other things he enjoys generates the serious walking-around money Tyson needs. As he rambled on about his future during a post-fight press conference, it sounded like one of those cartoons where the devil is whispering in one ear and an angel in the other.

One moment, Tyson talked about his broken back, unresolved issues, and "serious demons." The next moment, it sounded like the only way he would ever leave boxing was on a stretcher.

"I'm in the hurt business, and no one should care if I get hurt or if I die in the ring," Tyson said, "because this is what we do."

His few moments of unquestioned clarity were limited to a discussion on Lennox Lewis. Last June, he beat down Tyson in the same Memphis arena with a brutality made all the more chilling by its efficiency. Bigger, stronger, faster and most important, unafraid, Lewis closed one of Tyson's eyes and then the other; then he battered Tyson's nose and mouth and forced him to taste his own blood before knocking him cold.

Worse than the physical beating, though, was the sheer inevitability of it from Tyson's side. Those scars have yet to hear.

"To be honest I'm not ready to fight him (Lewis) at this time," Tyson said. "I need more fights. I don't want to get beat up again."

Yet Tyson-Lewis II will happen, and sooner than it should in terms of coaxing an honest effort from Tyson, which guarantees the same result as the first time around. Some knowledgeable people in the fight game will tell you it's been that way since before Tyson fought Buster Douglas. When his seriousness was questioned before the Golota fight 30 months ago, Tyson answered, "I can mix truth with lies. Some of it is a lot of fun. I had no personality when I started fighting. Now I do."

Life is full of trade-offs.

Tyson had skills when he started. Now he doesn't. All he has left is an audience willing to pay to find out how much lower the brooding clown prince and his sport are willing to go.

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Jim Litke is a national sports columnist for The Associated Press. Write to him at jlitke@ap.org