THE Shanghai Daily reported last week that Mike Tyson is to make a three-day visit to the Chinese city, beginning on Thursday when he will cut the ribbon to open a new nightclub in Haixin Plaza. A charity golf event is planned for Friday before a meeting on Saturday with the abbot of the city’s Jing’an Temple.

The report lauded the achievements of the youngest ever world heavyweight champion before it ended on an ominous note: “Tyson has served time for rape charges, biting Evander Holyfield’s ear, attempting to break an opponent’s arm and threatening to eat the children of former champion Lennox Lewis. Guests (at the Haixin Plaza) may be treated to a live show starring Tyson after the ceremony.”

The nature of the “show” was unspecified. Tyson will be 40 in June and, with his fighting days (in the ring) behind him, the after-dinner speaking circuit has become a principal means of making money. More than $30m in debt, tonight he will be guest of honour at a dinner at the Burlington Hotel in Dublin.

Last week he was in Britain, reunited with former opponent Frank Bruno and showing a softer side than when brutally stopping Bruno twice in his Las Vegas heyday. “I have a great deal of empathy with Frank. I understand what it is to go through addictions and I know what it’s like to deal with that pressure,” Tyson said about Bruno’s battle to overcome mental illness. “Frank is a remarkable man and he’s handled it so much better than I could have.”

He was magnanimous, too, when he met Ricky Hatton in Manchester, praising the world light-welterweight champion for his “fantastic” title-winning effort against Kostya Tszyu.

But mostly Tyson is disenchanted with boxing. “I don’t want my legacy to be that I was just some pugnacious guy. I don’t like ‘Iron Mike’. I wish I was never associated with him,” he said enigmatically. “I’m a different person, I guess. I don’t believe now what I believed in 20 years ago.”

Then he was the “baddest man on the planet”, about to embark upon a title reign that terrorised the heavyweight division. Now he is “just Mike, just a normal guy trying to be happy, though I know I never will be”.

Larry Holmes, his predecessor on the mythical pantheon of legendary world heavyweight champions, long ago predicted the torment that would afflict Tyson’s life. “He’ll end up in jail or with a bullet in his head,” Holmes warned while Tyson was still a young and vibrant force in heavyweight boxing. “I look at him and I just don’t see a happy ending.” Tyson, too, has struggled to see a way past the wreckage of a wild and decadent life.

“I believe I’ll die alone. I’ve been a loner all my life with my secrets and my pain and I’d want it that way,” he said recently. “I’m trying to find myself but I’m really lost. I’m really a sad, pathetic case. My whole life has been a waste. I’ve been a failure.

“I just want to escape. I’m really embarrassed with myself and my life. I want to get this part of my life over with as soon as possible. I’m so stigmatised, there is no way I can elevate myself. They would give (deceased serial killer) Jeffrey Dahmer a second chance before they give me another one.”

Yet he is trading on his notoriety around the world, in recent months accepting invitations to Chechnya and Italy, even appearing on a talk show in Argentina with Diego Maradona. His stay in Ireland is expected to include a visit to Gurteen in Co Sligo where Michael and Marion Kane run Kane’s Hill Hotel. The Kanes were introduced to Tyson several years ago by Joe Egan, the big Dubliner who was once his sparring partner in the Catskill mountains of upstate New York.

“Whatever happens in his life he’ll always be Mike Tyson, one of the greatest heavyweight champions who ever lived and one of the most famous men on the planet,” said Egan, who has remained a close friend. “I’ve spent time with him in England in the past few months and I know he’s looking forward to visiting Ireland.”

His visit is not without opposition, most vociferously from a number of women’s groups, but Tyson makes no apology for the man he is. “It’s a pervasive belief that I’m an animal, undomesticated, but regardless of the bizarre stuff I’ve done I’m a very rational individual,” he said.

“Everybody thinks I’m crazy and stupid because that’s what they want to believe. I think about Cus (his former mentor, Cus D’Amato) and what he told me. ‘You’re the type of guy who has to be hurt to learn,’ he said. I’m p***ed off today because he was right about everything.”