When Mike Tyson announced his partnership with K-1, the American sports world greeted it with the same reaction Mike Tyson gets for everything he does nowadays. They shrugged. They yawned. They rolled their eyes. But that doesn't mean they aren't going to tune in.

Flash back about seventeen years, to 1986. Mike Tyson was the biggest draw in American sports. As the youngest heavyweight champion in history, he had it all. Money. Fame. Women. At just 20 years old, he was already being favorably compared with the all-time boxing greats, like Muhammed Ali, Joe Louis, and Jack Dempsey. He was, in every sense of the word, larger than life.

Then came the fall. It started when an obviously under-prepared Tyson got knocked out by James "Buster" Douglas in what is still considered the greatest upset in boxing history. After that, you know what happened — from his 3-year incarceration for rape, to his notorious ear - biting incident vs. Evander Holeyfield (for the record, this reporter wishes Tyson bit "Head Butt" Holeyfield's entire ear off, but that's for another article), to his bizarre facial tattoos, all the way down to his recently declared bankruptcy, the story of Mike Tyson is one of the strangest in the history of sports. Think about it...name one American, with the possible exception of Michael Jackson, who's weirder. You can't, can you?

Now he's signed up to fight with K-1, and his first opponent is ex-National Football League player Bob Sapp. He's certainly not the first boxer to try his hand against Martial Arts fighters—Muhammed Ali fought Antonio Inoki (with Inoki spending the majority of his match crawling around the ring, kicking at Ali's legs), and the Spinks brothers, both Leon and Michael, have also tried their hand at Martial Arts fighting.

But my guess is Tyson will find more success in K-1 than any of those worthy fighters. And you can boil it all down to one reason: intimidation. Mike's ring skills may have eroded, but let's face it—the guy's still pretty damn scary. I wouldn’t want to be in Bob Sapp's shoes the night of their fight. He may just get knocked out of them.

While Sapp is certainly a fearsome opponent, chances are he was hand-picked as somebody Mike could beat. Think of it this way. Mike Tyson is an international superstar. The biggest draw in boxing history. Why put him in an early fight that he might lose? Ideally, this is the first Mike Tyson K-1 fight of many — it won't do anybody much good if an international superstar—albeit a fading one — gets knocked out in his first fight for K-1.