Mike Tyson is in Copenhagen, Denmark, this weekend for a fight for which he weighed in at 239 pounds (some 22 pounds heavier than his average weight in his prime) and for which he says he is especially motivated after his opponent allegedly tossed a racial slur in his direction during the pre-bout rigamarole.

This, of course, can lead to but one salient thought:

	Iron Mike used to be the center of the boxing universe. Now?

Remember when Mike Tyson mattered?

He's an easy joke these days, and I suppose everyone understands that. Look, once you've observed that Tyson's fight on Saturday is against a man who goes by several nicknames, including "Danish Pastry," you've just about covered the current ground as concerns a fighter once known as Iron Mike.

But that's just it -- the fact that such a moniker once applied to Mike Tyson is the rock-solid truth.

Iron Mike wasn't a joke; Tyson was real. He was ever controversial and he was ever divisive and he never came close to achieving anything approaching the same area code as a consensus of public opinion. But he was just utterly real as a force in boxing.

And this: He mattered.

Honk if you long ago gave up on the notion of anyone ever again walking away gracefully from this sport. You can make a compelling argument, moreover, that boxing simply discourages gracefulness on any level anymore, from the layered absurdities of the alphabet-soup sanctioning bodies to the siren call of cash to past-their-prime pugs willing to scrape it together for one more payday to, frankly, Don King.

And maybe Tyson and "grace" don't belong in the same sentence at any rate; given the man's personal history, public persona and prison time, that's certainly a conversation with legs. It can't surprise many people to learn that Tyson is still fighting at age 35, because it rarely surprises anybody who followed Tyson's career to learn that Tyson doesn't have an inclination to do anything else.

But, man, the real Tyson was something. He came storming out of his corner at the start of a bout and the whole boxing world seemed to lean forward in its seat. You knew something incredible was about to happen, even if you had no idea what that thing might be. People quibbled over whether he was a boxer or just a puncher; they drew up lists of old boxing greats and then patiently explained how each of those classic athletes could have handled Tyson, or vice versa.

The real Tyson was good for that. He was good for an actual boxing conversation, even amid his own very modern controversial life. And when he walked into a ring, people stopped talking and started looking.

This guy? The one standing in Denmark and making scowly-faces while staring at a big, grinning 259-pound galoot named Brian "Danish Pastry" Nielsen, who apparently uttered the phrase "monkey man" or "monkey men" in the presence of Mike and his entourage this week? It's hard to recognize this Tyson.

This Tyson means nothing. This Tyson is a carney working the midway. The last two Tyson opponents prior to Puff Daddy Nielsen: Andrew Golota and Julius Francis. And coming up next on the Irrelevance Challenge Network, it's future Tyson foes Kid Rock and Jennifer Love Hewitt.

The question isn't whether Tyson wins; the question is whether anybody is left to care. The question isn't whether most boxers have taken low-buzz fights in far-off places while maneuvering into position for a more significant bout, but whether the fact that Tyson is doing so even matters anymore.

What you'll hear from the one camp is that people still follow Tyson because of the dearth of really interesting heavyweights out there today, and that could be. But surely it is just as possible that folks still muster an interest in Tyson because, deep down, they can't believe his time already has passed.

It isn't as though Tyson is joining a short list of guys who stayed in boxing past their relevance: From Ali backward (and, alas, forward just as well), it has been an occupational hazard of the sport. At 35 and still in obvious good shape, Tyson isn't really even pushing the envelope on questionable practice of his skills.

In other words, no one is walking around worrying about whether Tyson might get hurt on Saturday night in Denmark. But they might be walking around quite certain they don't care. And maybe that only matters if you saw Tyson long ago enough to remember what it felt like when everyone did.

Mark Kreidler of the Sacramento Bee is a regular contributor to ESPN.com.