NEW YORK – In a dramatic format shift, the Mike Tyson-Lennox Lewis heavyweight title fight which was to be broadcast on pay-per-view in about 50 million homes at a price of $54.95, will now feature the former heavyweight champ and convicted rapist reading from a collection of poetry he penned while incarcerated in an Indianapolis prison. This announcement comes on the heels of recent charges filed by two Las Vegas women claiming Tyson raped them in his Las Vegas home earlier this year.

The June 8th bout in Memphis would have been the first boxing match jointly distributed and marketed by two competing cable networks, Showtime and HBO. Instead, "An Evening with Sir Michael Tyson, Country Gentleman" will be shown exclusively on A&E, simulcast from a set built to look like a grand ballroom in a stately English manor (picture left), where the boxer will sit in an oversized leather chair, smoke a fake pipe and wear an ascot while reading poetry selections in an incredibly phony British accent

Tyson is the WBC’s Number 1 ranked contender, and the fight would have been a mandatory title defense for Lewis. But now, "An Evening With Sir Michael" will simply consist of Tyson reading his crappy, sub-literate jailhouse couplets while petting a stuffed foxhound next to a blazing stone fireplace. Surrounding him will be shelves of prop leather-bound books and oil portraits of his white, British ancestors. Also, Tyson’s longtime manservant, Childress, will occasionally enter and re-fill Sir Michael’s oversized snifter with a fine, 30-year-old single malt.

While some educators praise Mr. Tyson for shedding the stereotype of the savage, punch-drunk pugilist, others, like Showtime senior vice president Steven Pratt, refuse to buy into what they consider a desperate, 11th hour attempt at re-inventing the boxer’s severely tarnished image.

"We believed strongly that this fight could have done in excess of a million pay-per-view buys, but now they want to prove that Mike is suddenly this ‘rehabilitated country gentleman’ or whatever," Pratt said while making exaggerated quote gestures with his fingers. "That said, we all know Americans are basically slack-jawed, mud-eating half-wits who would pay $50 to watch Mike Tyson take a dump…or plunger-rape his cell-mate, which, incidentally, prison surveillance video caught him doing back in ’93, long before A&E put a fucking top hat and monocle on him."

Tyson’s checkered career is perhaps best known for the 1997 Holyfield bout in which Tyson was disqualified for biting Holyfield's ears, just one of many subjects about which Tyson waxes poetic in his collection titled "Big Scary Man, Little Squeaky Girly Voice," written while serving six years for the 1991 rape of then 18-year-old Miss Indiana pageant contestant Desiree Washington. Other subjects upon which Tyson thoughtfully muses during the three-hour broadcast include the passing of former trainer and surrogate father Cus D’Amato, growing up in an impoverished Brooklyn neighborhood, and of course the blood-red haze of pure rage that clouds his vision while boxing, raping or threatening to "eat the children" of other boxers.

One segment of the pay-per-view special has Tyson reading a particularly moving excerpt from "Desiree Des-ir-erved It: "Hot, Summer Indiana night/Sister’s booty so high and tight/I’m the champ and she’s just a starry-eyed lass/So I filled her up with too much Cristal, held her down on the flo’ and busted that sweet black ass ‘cause the bitch was teasing me all night and deserved it, they all do." He punctuates this last line with a gentle, introspective nod of his head.

A&E is making "An Evening with Sir Michael Tyson, Country Gentleman" available for $69.95 in about 30 million cable households, other satellite households, and closed-circuit locations. The network will then donate the proceeds to state and local literacy programs, as well as, inevitably, to Tyson’s next team of defense lawyers.

"We expect there to be a tremendous number of early orders for Mr. Tyson’s dramatic literary presentation," A&E vice president Peter Joyce said. "It’ll be kind of like driving past a real grisly car accident. And what American worth his salt doesn’t like that?"

Tyson demonstrating a face he will try real hard not to make during A&E's broadcast.