Los Angeles (AFP)

Glory, downfall, redemption and comeback will have punctuated the "larger than life" life of former heavyweight terror Mike Tyson, back in the ring at 54 for an exhibition against Roy Jones Jr, prepared like a real fight.

"I want the world to see how tall I am."

This is the objective of the man whose existence, even more romantic than that of "Rocky Balboa" in the cinema, has touched the peaks as much as the abysses and will therefore go through the "return" box, Saturday at Staples Center in Los Angeles .

His last professional fight dates back to 2005 and it ended in a humiliating defeat against a stranger, the Irishman Kevin McBride.

"I was scared to be in the ring at the time. I was fighting for financial reasons. I was on drugs. This guy was just my ghost."

At the time, at almost 39 years old, it was indeed a long time since "Iron Mike" was not really worthy of this nickname acquired during a career where he was first the "Kid Dynamite" for Sports Illustrated , who in 1985 saw him as the next big heavyweight.

Its accession to the top will indeed have been meteoric.

Between March 6, 1985 and September 6, 1986, barely 18 months, he won his first 27 professional fights, including 15 in the first round.

In the 28th, it takes him two to defeat Trevor Berbick and become the youngest world champion in history in this category, at 20 years, 4 months, 23 days.

For more than three years, his shark eyes, his phenomenal punching power, his unalterable fury inspired fear in his opponents.

"I was mad, I had the impression of being a barbarian king set out to conquer the Roman Empire", he will say of this period when he also made the front page of the tabloids, between his divorce from actress Robin Givens, who accuses him of violence, and a few fights that bring him back to his original condition as a little thug from Brooklyn.

- Ear pieces -

Born on June 30, 1966 in Brownsville, renowned for its crime rate, young Michael, raised by his mother, does not escape the streets where he does not just run after the pigeons he loves.

His first fight pits him against a bigger one, who tore off the head of one of his birds.

"There, I realized that I could be the center of attention. It felt good to win. Everyone was screaming, applauding. I lived with this applause all these years," he told Details magazine .

An offender at eight, he had 38 arrests at thirteen, at which time boxing coach Cus d'Amato took him under his wing.

Tyson finds a spiritual father who nevertheless ceases to live there, four years after his death, in 1990, when James Buster Douglas inflicts his first KO in Tokyo.

"Boxing was disinteresting me. I just didn't feel Cus in me anymore. When Douglas got up after I knocked him to the mat, it made him stronger. No one else had done that before." , he explains.

The fall is brutal.

Two years later, he was convicted of raping a beauty queen and served in prison until 1995.

His return to the ring is victorious, but his titles, he recovers against modest opponents.

And lost them again in 1996, corrected by Evander Holyfield yet announced on the decline.

The revenge is tragicomic: Tyson bites Holyfield in the ears until bleeding, pieces fail in the ring.

He is now "the worst man on the planet" and receives a suspension.

- Addictions and bipolarity -

In 2002, he failed to become world champion over three decades, punished by the British Lennox Lewis.

Ruined, Tyson, who now sports a tribal tattoo around his left eye, ended his career in 2005 with a record of 50 wins (44 KOs) and six losses.

The result is an inexorable fall, marked by depression, cocaine, other arrests.

“I have no idea who I am,” he told the New York Times. “All my life I've been drinking, I'm on drugs, I've been partying. everything stops. I never thought I would live to this age. "

An age of reason resulting from a third marriage in 2009, just two weeks after the accidental death of one of her seven children.

In recent years, in addition to appearances in the cinema ("The Hangover"), he has performed on stage in a one-man-show where he tells the ups and downs of his own life, undermined by a rape suffered at the age of seven and bipolarity.

It is also flourishing in the legal cannabis business and while Covid-19 is rampant, another virus ends up catching up with it: boxing.

The fight will not be used this time to settle his debts, but to raise funds, "to help the homeless and those who are addicted".

“Because I've been homeless and addicted. I know how hard it is. Not so many people can survive it like I did.”

© 2020 AFP