Sports

Eight years after his retirement from boxing, Tyson’s back as promoter

Mike Tyson once said he never wanted to be part of boxing again. The sport that made him famous also brought him plenty of darkness.

His legacy as the youngest heavyweight champion in history earned him a spot in the International Boxing Hall of Fame. But the fame, the drugs, the women and a distrust of most people in boxing nearly killed him.

The fear of being sucked back into that cesspool has kept him out of the sport since his retirement in 2005. Now it’s time to welcome Tyson back to the jungle.

This week it was announced he has joined a promotion company, once Acquinity Sports but now renamed Iron Mike Productions. The company will promote a pair of championship bouts at the Turning Stone Resort Casino in Verona, N.Y., on Aug. 23 in a special addition of ESPN’s “Friday Night Fights.”

“This is something I’m excited about,” Tyson told The Post. “I want to start looking for fighters, real fighters. We want to develop champions the way Cus D’Amato did.”

It remains to be seen whether Tyson takes a hands-on approach to promoting or is more of a figurehead. He was brought in to add credibility to a company that has been around for more than two years, but struggled to get television exposure.

Tyson has partnered with Garry Jonas, who had operated Acquinity Sports out of Deerfield Beach, Fla. Among the dozen or so boxers already under contract are Argenis Mendez (21-1, 11 KOs), who will defend his junior lightweight title against Arash Usmanee (20-1, 10 KOs) on the ESPN broadcast, and Claudio Marrero (14-10, 11 KOs), who faces Jesus Andres Cuellar (22-1, 18 KOs) for an interim featherweight title. A light heavyweight prospect, Isiah Thomas, (12-0, 6 KOs), is also in the stable, as is 2008 Olympic goal medalist Felix Diaz.

Iron Mike fighters will be housed and trained in close quarters in Florida much the way Tyson was groomed to be a boxer in the Catskills by D’Amato.

Tyson said he was excited by the chance to not only groom champion boxers, but make a positive impact on their lives the way D’Amato did for him.

“I want to teach them not to make some of the mistakes I made,” Tyson said.

The former two-time heavyweight champion from Brownsville, Brooklyn, will need to squeeze being a promoter into an already busy schedule. He was making the rounds in Manhattan this week, including filming an upcoming HBO documentary about his one-man show, “Undisputed Truth.”

He also raised funds for his Mike Tyson Cares foundation, which recently fed more than 7,000 homeless people.

“It’s about giving kids a fighting chance at life,” Tyson said. “It’s evident with people killing each other they don’t have hope for a better life. If they had hope for a better life, they wouldn’t be killing each other. I was one of the kids that didn’t have hope. I had to meet somebody who had more hope than I had. Not everyone is fortunate to meet somebody like that.’’

* Boxing is back: Floyd Mayweather vs. Canelo Alvarez and Danny Garcia vs. Lucas Matthysse on the same PPV card.

“Boxing is at its finest when the best step up to fight the best, and this is what we have with Mayweather and Canelo and now Garcia and Matthysse,” said Oscar De La Hoya, president of Golden Boy Promotions. “September 14 will be one of the most memorable nights of boxing we have been treated to in a long time.”

* Dominick Guinn will step in to fight Tomasz Adamek on Aug. 3 at the Mohegan Sun. The bout is one of three to be televised that night on NBC’s “Fight Night” series. In the main event, Curtis Stevens and Saul Roman will clash for 10 rounds in a middleweight test.