You might expect varied topics to come up in a conversation with Mike Tyson, the retired , undisputed heavyweight champion of the world, who is preparing to bring his one-man show, Mike Tyson: Undisputed Truth, to the Air Canada Centre on Sept. 10.

Sure, Tyson was game to discuss whether Orange Is the New Black ("not if you're already black"), how much money to bring to a divorce settlement with Robin Givens ("a whole lot") and what part of your opponents is the tastiest to bite ("the ears, every time.")

But what came as more than a bit of a surprise was Tyson's thoughts on why he considers himself a spiritual man but not a religious one.

"Religion?" he scoffs. "Religion is for people who are scared of hell. I'm spiritual because I've already been to hell. S---, I've been there a couple of times."

The refreshing thing about Tyson is that he doesn't sound like he's delivering anybody's message track. If you've followed him over the years, you know he's his own man and he say what's on his mind, even if it embarrasses those around him.

"You know what's the hardest part about trying to be a good person? It's the four letter words. They keep telling me I shouldn't curse, but f---, that's how I've talked all my life, I can't change now. People expect to meet the proverbial cussing Mike Tyson and you know what? So do I."

No wonder. Tyson's life has been spinning out of control in so many ways for so many years that if he'd been a car General Motors would have recalled the whole line years ago.

Growing up on the mean streets of Bedford-Stuyvesant in Brooklyn, Tyson had been arrested 38 times by the age of 13.

"If they hadn't sent me to a boys' home where they found out I could box, I'd probably be dead right now," laughs Tyson. Then he stops laughing. "And maybe that wouldn't be such a bad thing for everybody."

When Tyson was a boxing champ, his demons were largely kept in check or confined to inside the ring, but on the night of Feb. 11, 1990 he lost his undisputed championship to Buster Douglas in a toughly contested match.

And that's when things really started unravelling. His much publicized and very acrimonious marriage to actress Givens came apart in a very nasty way. He started pulling out of matches just before they were to take place and, on the night of July 19, 1991, Tyson raped 18-year-old Desiree Washington, Miss Black Rhode Island.

Tyson denies that in Undisputed Truth, even though he served three years in prison for it. "It's not because I'm trying to make myself seem like a good guy. I'm not. There's a lot of really bad stuff in there, it's a roller-coaster of emotions, but the story is called Undisputed Truth and some of those so-called truths just ain't undisputed."

The way Tyson spits out those words makes you realize this may be a slightly reformed Mike Tyson, easy on the four letter words, but "kinder" and "gentler" are not adjectives that spring to mind.

"It's actually my wife, Kiki, who put the script together. I just gave her everything I had written about my life and so, you go do something with it, babe."

And so she did, in a version that opened in Las Vegas in April 2012, got buffed up by director Spike Lee and then went on to Broadway, where New York Times critic Neil Genzingler, while admitting the show had a kind of "clumsy charm," ended on a more serious note, by observing that "Mr. Tyson's story just sort of runs out of gas. That leaves the audience unable to make an educated guess as to whether the new, improved Iron Mike will stick around, or whether Mr. Tyson will fall off one wagon or another as he has so often in the past."

Like performers in any medium who've failed to please the critics, Tyson appeals to the court of public opinion.

"It's always a great hit with audiences, even just recently in Miami, which is not a big boxing town. I was discouraged for a while, but it picked up."

One is loath to correct Tyson, but Miami was home of the "golden age of boxing," where some of the starriest matches involving the likes of Patterson, Clay and Liston were fought.

Or maybe Tyson knows more truth than he's speaking and a city in love with the glory days of the sport didn't want to see what someone like him did to it.

"My show is a mind-boggling roller-coaster of emotions," raves Tyson, sounding like any showbiz huckster, but then the real man starts to peep through again.

"Sure I want to entertain people," he says, "but I want to show them things, things they thought they knew about and things they didn't think they knew about."

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He pauses. "Yeah, I talk about my daughter."

On May 25, 2009, his 4-year-daughter Exodus was found tangled in a cord, hanging from an exercise treadmill. She died the next day.

"I am not sure of many things, friend, but I am sure that day was the lowest one of my life."

But any suggestion that Tyson might be using that tragedy to help other parents identify with him brings a volcanic retort.

"What kind of man do you think I am? I have no idea what other parents feel. I have no exclusivity to pain. There are so many other parents who's lost children. You gotta live life on life's time."

All at once, it's like a door has opened.

"Do you know why I suddenly have this huge platform? It's so I can explain to people that I wasn't well. I was so desperate to succeed I would have sold my soul to the devil if that was possible.

"I came from such a morbid home life that I couldn't live without feeling the hot stones and seeing the blazing fires. Hell was my life, it was my world, it was where I grew up."

And when Tyson found his fighting "gift" it was a curse more than a blessing.

"I was nothing but a 100 per cent fighter. I was a savage. I didn't know how to have a good time. I was crazy. There was an egomania pouring out of me.

"I was the baddest ass man on earth and all I knew how to do were bad things."

But what's it like today? What do you believe now?

"If you're not humble, then the world will thrust humbleness upon you."