Tyson hopes to knock out his debt

LOUISVILLE, Ky. — By now, Mike Tyson’s woes have been well documented. He’s broke after blowing about $300 million, owes creditors another $38 million, and is in desperate need of a series of fights to put a Bentley or two back in the garage.

At 38, he’s a shell of the fighter he once was, reduced to taking on fringe contenders while hoping he still has something left — and that fans still care enough to pay to see it.

The former baddest man on the planet returns to the ring tonight after an absence of 17 months to take on little-known British heavyweight Danny Williams. Tyson is in Muhammad Ali’s hometown, yet now he’s more of a curiosity than a legitimate contender.

The return is hardly a calculated one. Tyson simply ran out of money and has no way to make any other than by boxing.

“I didn’t think I was going to fight again,” Tyson said. “I wanted to be like Ricky Williams and have some fun.”

The fun stopped when creditors took his cars, made him sell his multimillion-dollar houses and reduced Tyson to caring for his pigeons in a modest Phoenix home. But Tyson insists that while he’s fighting again because of necessity, he has also rediscovered a love for the sport.

Now, it’s a new, mellower Tyson who has no entourage, shows no public anger and appears genuinely happy to be back in the ring.

“I’m just looking forward to fighting Friday,” Tyson said. “Isn’t it cool to be fighting Friday?”

Tyson, who has been in the ring only 49 seconds since taking a beating from Lennox Lewis two years ago, trained three months for the scheduled 10-round fight against Williams, a former British Commonwealth champion who was picked as an opponent because he works for cheap and seems to be an easy target.

Unlike his last fight against Clifford Etienne, when he partied during training and then took a week off before the fight to get a facial tattoo, Tyson seems to be taking this comeback seriously.

That didn’t show at Thursday’s weigh-in, when Tyson weighed 233 pounds, one less than when he was stopped by Lewis but seven more than against Etienne. Williams weighed 265 pounds.

“My future seems so much brighter than my past,” Tyson said. “I don’t even know how I made it to the fight 17 months ago.”

Tyson will earn several million dollars for the 57th fight of a pro career that began 19 years ago with a first-round knockout of Hector Mercedes in Albany, N.Y. If his bankruptcy reorganization plan is approved by a judge, he’ll be able to keep $2 million of it for himself while the rest goes to creditors.

According to the plan, Tyson must fight often in the next two years to pay off his debts.