Tyson sees the lighter side of life

He was a brute of a fighter. He was even worse as a man. “I got intoxicated with myself,” Tyson admitted. “I didn’t know how empty I was as the champ.”

He hasn’t been a champ now for 14 years,and hasn’t fought for real in five. A freak show when he was fighting,he became even freakier as a bankrupt junkie who ballooned to 351 pounds and seemed headed either to prison or an extra large casket.

But he’s given up the drugs,and lost much of the weight. He hasn’t stepped foot in a strip club in two years. And,incredibly,he’s now in the middle of the most improbable comeback of all.

Meet the new Mike Tyson. Entertainer,actor,dancer and,yes,comedian extraordinaire.

Watch his latest video. Book him for your next event. “I took myself way too seriously then,but now I’m a big clown,” Tyson said. “I’m fine with that.”

So are a lot of other people,who are discovering a side of Tyson that would have been unimaginable in the days he was beating up people for a living. They saw him steal a scene in the hit movie “The Hangover,” and watched him dance with Wayne Brady in a hilarious online video remake of the Bobby Brown classic “Every Little Step.”

Making fun of himself comes easy these days for Tyson. But there’s more to come in his odd career path. He’s going to be featured next year in a TV series on raising the pigeons he loves,and he’s got plans to display his tattooed face on the big screen once again.

“I’m going to do some more acting. We’re doing some serious stuff,” Tyson said. “I’m talking big budget movie.”

That kind of talk would have been absurd even a few years ago when Tyson narrowly escaped a prison term for cocaine possession. Tragedy followed last year when one of his daughters died at her Phoenix home after being caught up in a cord on a treadmill. It’s clear he’s still pained by her death. But he also spoke with excitement about the February 1 due date for the boy he and his new wife are expecting.

The battle with drugs,Tyson says,is a daily fight that he must wage to stay clean. So far it’s working,as is the vegetarian diet that has him weighing in about the same as he did late in his career.

“Not a vegetarian,a Vegan,” Tyson corrected me. “I eat stuff like grapes,penne pasta and mushrooms.”

New food. New life. New career. Best thing yet,though,in the reinvention of Mike Tyson,though,might be his new attitude. Is Tyson really rehabilitated? Who knows,but he does seem at peace with himself after long tortured years of trying to figure out why everyone wanted to be around him and why nearly everyone wanted a piece of him.