Etienne Reconsiders, Says He’s Ready to Tattoo Tyson

The choice facing Clifford Etienne was simple. Step into the ring with a definitely out-of-shape and perhaps out-of-his-mind opponent who would just as soon bite your ear off as knock you out, or pack up and go home. If you get into the ring, you get a million dollars and a chance to make a name for yourself. If you go home, you get nothing and the name forever affixed to you is coward.

After a night of thinking, and maybe drinking, Etienne came to the obvious conclusion. He will go ahead with Saturday night’s heavyweight fight at the Pyramid in Memphis, Tenn., against Mike Tyson despite Tyson’s bizarre behavior the past few days.

“I’m a fighter, not a coward,” Etienne told the Associated Press. “I thought about it all night. I didn’t work all these months to get in shape without going out and being able to do my thing.”

The first sign Tyson was acting unusually irrational came Feb. 11 when he had a tattoo applied down one side of his face, a procedure that could result in excessive bleeding if the area were struck with a boxing glove. Then Tyson stopped training. Then he claimed to have come down with flu. Then, on Monday, he said he was too sick to fight. Then, on Tuesday, he made a miraculous recovery and said he was back in the fight.

Too late, Etienne said, now he was backing out.

Les Bonano, Etienne’s manager, told the Associated Press that Etienne, upon learning Monday his once-in-a-lifetime opportunity may have slipped away, sat up most of the night consuming alcohol.

“I think it was like, ‘Drown your sorrows,’ at the time,” Bonano said.

Etienne, however, denied Bonano’s account.

“I don’t party,” he said. “I’m a family man.”

But he didn’t deny the importance of taking the match.

“This fight is my future,” Etienne said. “I don’t have anything to do with how Mike feels or anything like that. I just know what I can do.”

Would he focus on hitting Tyson’s new, vulnerable tattoo?

“I’ll try to hit everything.”