TYSON IS HIS OWN GREATEST OPPONENT.

Byline: KAREN CROUSE

Mike Tyson reminds us of the diner who cozies up to his cell phone at lunch -- and not just because both will chew your ear off.

The person who speaks so loudly into his phone that diners two tables over can hear his conversation more clearly than their own needs you to notice him. He is insecure.

So, by his own admission, is Tyson.

Not that anybody had to hear the heavyweight boxer admit as much at a press conference leading up to his latest burlesque turn, uh, bout, tonight against Andrew Golota in Auburn Hills, Mich.

From the time he became the youngest heavyweight champion, Tyson's actions have been one long anguished cry for the love and attention and security that eluded him as a child.

For the first few years of his life, he was all alone in the world. For the past few years, he might as well have been; he has surrounded himself with people who treat him as nothing more than a winning lottery ticket. As long as they get their payoff, the sycophants taking care of Tyson don't care what ultimately happens to him.

It certainly wasn't someone with Tyson's best interests at heart who decided before previous bouts to cut the boxer off the antidepressant he was taking so a meaner, more unmanageable man might step into the ring against the likes of Frans Botha and Lou Savarese.

And anybody who cared at all about the person behind the fists would have made sure Tyson not only knew the name of the antidepressant he is taking but every one of its possible side effects.

As it is, Tyson professes not to know what it is he's swallowing. Which makes him appear to be thinking more like a prepubescent Chinese swimmer than a 34-year-old father of four.

Shame on Tyson for being a passenger in his own life. And shame on his drivers. I hope they are proud. Because if Tyson remains a manchild, it's only because he has grown older in the company of people who haven't made it their business to see that he grows up and assumes an adult's duties and responsibilities (among them helping to rear his children, whom he said he currently doesn't ``have much of a relationship with'').

Mike Tyson reminds us of Frankenstein's soulless monster, who, longing for sympathy and shunned by everybody, eventually turns on his creator.

You can see the monster turning on his makers in Tyson's words this week. In an interview with a reporter from USA Today, he said, ``I'm an angry guy. I'm bitter, I'm mean because people I trusted all my life, they (screwed) me.''

Tyson has no kinder feelings for the media, which have, after all, helped his handlers create the monster by painstakingly validating its existence.

``You guys looked at my every mistake with a magnifying glass and then broadcast it to the world and then you made me a laughingstock in front of people I love, in front of my children,'' Tyson told USA Today. ``You think it's a joke that I'm angry at you guys? It's not going to be a joke when I'm really angry and I confront one of y'all.''

No doubt he'll do it much the same way he confronted the strangers on the road in Maryland or boxer Orlin Norris Jr. after the round-ending bell of one bout or Savarese at the end of another fight.

When Tyson said, ``I hate everybody,'' earlier in the week, what we think he really meant to say is he hates himself. From his rape conviction in Indiana to his estrangement from his wife and children, all Tyson's actions spring from the hole he has where a soul should be.

The troubling thing is, society seems to be stooping to Tyson's level. Only in a clime where nice is viewed as a four-letter word and it's cool to be crass (see the U.S. Olympic men's 400-meter relay team) can boxer- turned-promoter Thomas Hearns suggest in all seriousness that Tyson ``knows you must have showmanship. He comes across as angry, but I think that's just his way of getting people to listen to him.''

Remember Hearns' words; Tyson's next legal team likely will borrow them for its defense.

Tyson will earn $10 million for tonight's farce. That gives him 10 million reasons to continue sidestepping the only fight of his life worth anything.

Tyson vs. Tyson is the one bout we'd enthusiastically get behind. Anyone in his corner for anything less risks being an accessory to a man's slow, sad death.

We wish people wouldn't listen to Tyson when he says, ``I want your grandkids and great-grandkids to remember me and say `Wow, what a bizarre individual.' ''

Because Mike Tyson reminds us that sanity should be the goal, not celebrity.

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Photo: (color) Mike Tyson, shown posing during Thursday's weigh in at the Palace in Auburn Hills, Mich., needs to confront his many personal issues.

Carlos Osorio/Associated Press