Brooding and tormented, Mike Tyson has become a dissertation in self destruction.

The world looked on in awe and revulsion as he went from the charismatic youngest world heavyweight champion in 1986 into a maelstrom of manic, criminal and ghoulish antics in the 1990s.

A product and purveyor of chaos from an amoral Brownsville ghetto, it was easy for many to cast judgment and sneer.

Ironically, he's now selling the same product back to society and with success. First, a recent movie where he spoke candidly of his past demeanours, was a hit, now a UK tour, which includes the Waterfront Hall this evening, and no doubt a book is to follow. Society, it seems, loves the dark side of life but paradoxically pokes contempt at those from whom it flows.

Michael Gerard Tyson was born into darkness, almost cursed it seemed, and his one-man soap opera took another cruel twist when, in May of this year, his four-year-old daughter Exodus, accidentally strangled herself on a treadmill in her mother's home.

It was the latest bleak chapter in a life that has seen the 43-year-old's father walk out on him when he was two, lose his mother at 16 to cancer, squander around $400m in ring earnings, do time for rape and watch his life implode as his boxing career ended up as a freak show. Having bitten off the ear of Evander Holyfield in a 1997 world title fight, America continued to tune in for the latest crazy act of a man whose sporting prowess had gone so he traded on being the self-confessed ‘baddest man on the planet' — on one occasion threatening to eat Lennox Lewis's children.

Speaking of his mother, Tyson once recalled: “I never saw my mother happy with me and proud of me for doing something. She only knew of me as being a wild kid running the streets, coming home with new clothes that she knew I didn't pay for. I never got a chance to talk to her or know her.”

An Irishman would eventually bring down the curtain on his career. Clones giant Kevin McBride, who like so many others would have folded inside a round during Iron Mike's hey-day, stopped a pitiful looking shadow of the champion in 2005.

Like so many in the Noble Art, Tyson was the last to know that he was no longer a contender. For the numerous hangers on, the gravy train that started when a gang rival snapped the head off one of his pigeons, had come to a grinding halt.

Hard to believe, but the young Tyson was shy, introverted, embarrassed by his lisp, bullied and at his happiest when looking after his racing pigeons in Brownsville. But the bullying stopped when he took revenge on the one who dismembered his pigeon.

Respect on the street grew and so did his descent into criminal behaviour. More than 30 arrests led to him being sent to a reform school where his life changed for ever after a meeting with counsellor Bob Stewart.

Stewart was a former amateur champion and Tyson persuaded him that he would behave as long as he could learn how to box. Suddenly there was some purpose to life and such was his natural ability that Stewart passed him on to the late, great coach Cus D'Amato.

D'Amato and wife, Camille Ewald, became his surrogate parents and the veteran trainer knew that he had an uncut diamond ready to be honed for glory. Before he ever got near a professional ring, D'Amato predicted he would become World heavyweight champion.

Tyson was largely on the straight and narrow, but when he crossed D'Amato's assistant, Teddy Atlas, over an incident with his niece, the young prospect found a gun stuck to his head. Atlas moved on and D'Amato continued the process of making him the most menacing fighting machine on the planet.

Sadly, D'Amato passed on and didn't witness the night Tyson pummeled Trevor Berbick to the canvas in 1986 to claim the WBC World heavyweight title.

Not only did he make history by becoming the youngest holder of the title at 20 years and four months, but with one punch he sent the bewildered Berbick to the canvas on three different occasions.

The sporting world was electrified by Tyson but, in parallel with his incredible success, the cement holding him together was crumbling. If the death of D'Amato was a crushing blow, then the passing of trusted manager Jim Jacobs cut away any lasting foundations.

The two men he could rely on were gone and now he would have to go back to relying on his street instincts.

Promoter Bill Cayton was replaced by Don King and, by the late 80s, the old demons in his head had taken over. His marriage in 1988 to actress Robin Givens ended with allegations of abuse and problems would eventually manifest themselves in the ring.

A 30-1 outsider James ‘Buster' Douglas arrived in Tokyo in 1990 as a sacrifical lamb and left with Tyson's belts. Two years later, he was convicted of raping Desiree Washington, a Miss Black American contestant, and sent to prison. While he returned to win the WBC title, the old fire was gone.

He now laughs off any suggestion of a return to the ring and is trying to make his way in life after help from, among others, Alcoholics Anonymous. Many didn't even believe he would reach 43 but tonight he holds court with friend Barry McGuigan.

Still haunted, it seems, by his gruesome actions, once Tyson solely fought for a fist full of dollars, now it seems he fights for freedom from the past.

But whether we — or he — likes it or not, it is that history of chaos which is paying for the chance of a new beginning.