Tyson Decides to Fight After All

The crazy world of Mike Tyson turned even more unpredictable last night. Less than 24 hours after saying he was not going to Memphis to fight Clifford Etienne, he chartered a private jet from Las Vegas and said he wanted to fight after all.

"He woke up today and called and said, 'I want to do it'," his manager Shelly Finkel said yesterday. "He's leaving today."

But trainer Freddie Roach, a well-respected figure who learnt his trade as an assistant to the legendary Eddie Futch, has warned Tyson that he is not in a proper condition to fight. Las Vegas sources say he has not trained for the past 11 days, and rumours persist that he has staged several parties in that time.

"I told him, 'Mike, as your friend, I don't think you're ready for the fight'," Roach said. "He said, 'I'm going to knock him out, are you going to be with me?'"

Roach said he told Tyson he would be there if the fighter was going to Memphis to win. "We'll get a couple days in, the best we can, to get him back in fight shape," Roach said.

Officially, Tyson suffered a serious bout of influenza and had been bedridden. But it is known he has been in dispute with his US paymasters Showtime over his fight purse.

His demands for a pay increase were rejected. Tyson wanted around $4m (£2.5m) after being guaranteed less than $2m, and speculation began that he was also jeopardising his chance of a June rematch with Lennox Lewis. It was possibly the realisation that he could be left with no purse - and no career - which prompted his u-turn.

Tyson's financial situation is dire. Despite having earned more than $200m during his career, he still leads a hedonistic, hand-to-mouth existence and is under even more pressure because of a huge divorce settlement he must pay his second wife Monica.

With nearly 11,000 tickets sold at the Pyramid Arena in Memphis for Saturday's contest, and with television companies arriving from all over the world to broadcast the event, many people will be breathing a sigh of relief, not least Lennox Lewis, who is due to pocket $25m from a rematch with Tyson.

But there may yet be a further twists in this on-off-on saga."We're back on but we've got a major problem. Clifford doesn't want to fight now," Les Bonano, Etienne's manager said yesterday. "He said: 'The world doesn't revolve around Mike Tyson'."