WHEN the guy once dubbed 'The Baddest Man On The Planet' puts his hand on your arm, you listen... you listen real good.

Mike Tyson still cuts a pretty daunting figure, even without the gloves and the stare, but this is a very different person to the beast who once decapitated boxing's entire heavyweight division.

Iron Mike, as he was also known, is now dead and buried, he says, and only the memories remain.

What has now emerged is a man at peace with himself, not the boy once at war with the rest of the world.

Speaking from his hotel bedroom ahead of last night's sportsman's evening in Stoke-on-Trent, he welcomed us with casual warmth, sat himself down and spoke intelligently and articulately about the life he once lived and the life he now lives.

There is no split personality, just a splitting of his two lives, for the life we all witnessed through TV close-ups and telephoto lenses was one he wanted not so much for himself, but his late, lamented mentor-cum-father figure Cus D'Amato.

"Iron Mike couldn't have relationships and friendships," said the 43-year-old New Yorker, distancing himself from the past. "He's dead really and I should have killed him a long time ago.

"What I am proud of from that time in my life is making Cus happy. I wanted to make him happy and I knew that being world heavyweight champion would do that.

"He taught me about the heavyweights and I think of Muhammad Ali and Joe Louis as gods. He used to say to me: 'I want people to know your name'.

"I was just a kid full of insecurity who didn't want to let him down. He would cram things in my mind. He would come up to me at four in the morning and say: 'You remember what I tell you?' That's why I've got a photographic memory."

Tyson now believes he can be his true self after leaving boxing behind after tasting defeat – only his sixth in 56 bouts – when stepping out of the ring for the last time in 2005.

"The best thing I ever did was retiring," he said. "When I was fighting I wasn't a nice person. By nature I'm a passive person and now I want to live that life.

"Cus would still be proud of me. He would have been so happy if he'd seen me treating my wife and children with respect now."

Boxing certainly doesn't feature on his radar anymore and, with that hand hovering over the knee, it doesn't seem appropriate to ask him about Britain's current world champion David Haye.

Better to stick to the past, then, and ask where Iron Mike would have ranked in the pantheon of boxing's all-time greats.

"Your ego wants you to be number one," he said, "but that's down to everyone else's opinion. Tommy Burns once said: 'I leave it up to the people to rate me'."

So which heavyweight of the past would he have paid to watch ringside?

"The (Jack) Dempsey fights. Jack Johnson. Then there's Joe Louis – and Burns."

And was 'The Greatest' truly the greatest? "Muhammad Ali. He was the best. But I worship all the greats. I've read about them. What I like is when they've had a beating, they still come back to prove themselves and win the title."

Which brings us on to one British fighter he is happy to talk about, the one-time adversary he twice dispatched inside five and three rounds respectively in 1989 and 1996.

"Frank Bruno represents what England is all about... never giving up. That's what I respect. I still see him every now and then."

Tyson will be passing close by Bruno's front door shortly as he criss-crosses the country on a sell-out speaking tour.

Having just sampled life even further north after a gig in Wigan – and generously giving to the Help The Heroes fund-raiser for injured servicemen – he said: "This is different to New York and London. Here, you are home town people.

"It's great, it's where everyone is your friend.

"Northern England people have generations of warriors and they understand pain. I'm not embarrassed to say I cried on stage last night because I'm a sensitive person.

"In America they would think you are weak for that, but not here."

His first 43 years have contained at least five lifetimes, so what of the next 43?

"I want to have good relationships with the kids, the wife, the family.

"I want to get to re-know my friends because I'm not partying no more and not chasing girls no more. Then when we die, we can die in peace."