The sport of boxing has been tailspinning toward chaos recently. Boxing has featured some of the world’s best sports figures, such as Muhammed Ali, and it now features and suffers from the world’s most idiotic characters, such as Mike Tyson.

Tyson has been scheduled to fight Clifford Etienne on Feb. 22 in Memphis, Tenn. But this former heavyweight champion, who has never made a strong commitment to the heavyweight bout, actually stood up his trainer at the gym for three straight days before missing two flights to Memphis this past weekend. He said he had flu-like symptoms over the weekend, but it looks like he might have just been a little shy of sobriety and instead got a large tribal motif tattoo that wraps around his left eye.

So after finally boarding a flight to Tennessee on Feb. 18 and saying he wants to fight, Etienne then announced that the weekend bout was off. However, adding to the plot of what is already making out to be a good soap opera, Etienne agreed to fight Tyson on Feb. 19.

Etienne was apparently displeased with the way Tyson was running the show and dictating the terms of their boxing match. But then Etienne realized that Tyson is a former champion (but is now a nutcase), and that Etienne is the first step on a road that will supposedly end with a rematch against Lennox Lewis.

“”If I were him, I’d be jumping for joy that he’s fighting Mike Tyson, who hasn’t trained for days,”” said Tyson’s manager, Shelly Finkel, of Etienne.

(Etienne probably wasn’t jumping for joy because he wasn’t sure if he wanted a bite taken out of him.)

Although Tyson has been in and out of prison, hasn’t won a major fight in years and is always the center of controversy, he is still a star. Had Etienne not said that he would fight, promoters would have selected a substitute to step through the ropes and trade punches with the tattoo-faced Tyson.

“”If he fights, people will watch,”” a TV consultant said. “”They either want to see him destroy someone, or be destroyed.””

Or people just want to see what Tyson will do this time around to further drive the sunken world of boxing into disorder.