The latest stop for the Mike Tyson Travelling Circus and Freak Show takes place tomorrow night in Auburn Hills, Michigan, when the self-styled "Baddest Man on the Planet" is scheduled to fight Poland's Andrew Golota, the world's second-dirtiest practising heavyweight.

Three weeks hence, in Las Vegas, champion Lennox Lewis will entertain his top-ranked challenger, New Zealand's David Tua. While Lewis is rated a 2 to 5 betting favourite, Tua looms by almost any standard his most dangerous challenger to date, and the fight figures to be the most competitive of Lewis's three 2000 title defences.

It is perhaps a telling commentary on the state of contemporary boxing that while the Lewis-Tua pay-per-view telecast has been priced at $44.95 (£40.50), the asking price for Tyson-Golota is five bucks more at $49.95 (£45). Needless to say, if both Tyson and Golota manage to box for 10 rounds under the guidelines of the Marquess of Queensberry, the paying customers are going to be terribly disappointed.

Tyson's behaviour in recent years has become increasingly bizarre. After serving out his banishment from the sport for biting both of Evander Holyfield's ears (spitting a portion of one onto the canvas) in their 1997 fight, he has (a) attempted to break Francois Botha's arm in a clinch, (b) precipitated a no-contest ruling by punching Orlin Norris after the bell, (c) attempted to dismember both opponent Lou Savarese and referee John Coyle after Coyle had stopped this summer's Glasgow fight and (d) promised to devour Lewis's vital organs, along with the champion's non-existent children.

When it comes to flouting the rules, the thuggish Tyson would this time appear to have met his match in Golota, who was twice disqualified for attempting to rearrange the private parts of Riddick Bowe, and who has demonstrated himself be at least Tyson's equal when it comes to biting and head-butting.

Following his bronze medal-winning performance in the 1988 Seoul Games, Golota migrated to Chicago (one step, it would later emerge, ahead of the Polish authorities), where he began boxing as a professional. Even in the nascent days of his career he was carving out a niche for himself as a walking, breathing Polish joke.

The first story I heard about Golota came from Lou Duva, the venerable trainer who worked with Golota early on. Doubled over with laughter as he related the tale, Duva reported that Golota had complained about the harsh taste of a particular brand of American toothpaste. The trainer asked to examine the substance and discovered that the boxer had been using a tube of wintergreen liniment to brush his teeth.

A year or so later, Main Events publicist (and Duva son-in-law) Mike Boorman told of the Pole's experience at one of those smorgasbord buffets endemic to Las Vegas hotels. Golota liked the food so much that he returned several times to replenish his plate - but instead of simply going back through the line at the all-you-can-eat buffet, Golota queued up and paid a new entry fee on each occasion.

All right, being a moron isn't necessarily a bar to success in the fight game. Sometimes, in fact, it helps. But Golota has displayed a remarkable proclivity for snatching defeat from the jaws of victory.

IN his first fight against Bowe, for instance, he was leading on all three scorecards when he hit the former champion squarely in the scrotum on at least half a dozen occasions, getting himself disqualified from a fight he could not have lost any other way. The only people more surprised than Bowe himself by this turn of events were the security personnel at Madison Square Garden, who were simply overrun when full-scale warfare broke out between the supporters of the two boxers at the denouement.

In a rematch, Golota was once again winning handily when a series of punches below the belt resulted first in a warning and eventually in his disqualification. Golota reacted to the development by simultaneously punching himself in the head with both gloves and proclaiming, correctly, "I stupid!"

Just a year ago Golota was on the verge of defeating then-unbeaten Michael Grant, whom he had knocked down twice in the early going. Then after Grant decked him in the 10th round, Golota got to his feet, apparently unhurt, but when the referee asked him - several times - if he wished to continue, the Pole answered in unequivocal terms that he did not.

Throw in his performance against Lewis in their 1997 title fight, when an obviously terrified Golota got himself knocked out in barely a minute, and you would seem to have the perfect Tyson foil. The fact that Golota also once won a fight (in 1996 against Dannell Nicholson) by head-butting his opponent into submission and won another (versus Samson Po'iha, in 1995) by taking a big bite out of the Polynesian's shoulder merely provides icing on the cake.

The promoters of next Friday's fight have, of course, lost no opportunity to remind would-be customers of the dubious history of the combined combatants, and the boxers themselves have not exactly discouraged that anticipation.

Tyson, when he surfaced a few weeks ago at a Los Angeles press conference, told assembled reporters that he ingests Zoloft, his prescribed anti-depression medication, "to keep me from killing you all".

Al Certo, the New Jersey septuagenarian who is now training Golota, has encouraged WWF (World Wrestling Federation) comparisons. "If Golota wants to body-slam Tyson, that's his business," Certo said. "I'm not teaching him anything he don't know. He wrote the book."

In fact, said Certo, "I'm having the sparring partners rough him up, like putting an arm underneath his chin and twisting it, and using the head and shoulders and stepping on his feet. Andrew got pissed off when we started doing it, so I said, `Listen, Andrew, these are the things that are going to happen to you in the fight.' "

"Andrew will fight by the rules as long as he can," promises Certo, who likens the Tyson-Golota matchup to "a little dog fighting a bear."

The dog-bear analogy is one which would doubtless have appealed to Phineas T Barnum, the great 19th-century showman who famously said: "There's a sucker born every minute."

It's as true today as it was then.