LOL! MIKE TYSON BE FLIPPIN' THEM BIRDS!

Watching former heavyweight champion Mike Tyson work his way into the world of pigeon racing sounds bizarre and ends up fascinating.

After the path Tyson's life has taken to this point, perhaps nothing should be surprising. He was one of the most intimidating fighters ever and then suddenly he became mortal. He went out of control. He went to jail.

Pigeon racing, he says, takes him back to his youth in Brooklyn, before any of the rest started.

The cast of "Taking on Tyson," besides Mike and the pigeons, includes guys who look and talk like the streets, except their lives are on the rooftops.

That's where they keep and train their birds, a process this series makes surprisingly interesting.

A pigeon raiser can tell champion stock the same way that a horse or dog breeder knows a potential winner. Training begins when the bird is several months old, starting with short runs. After that, the distance is gradually stretched.

For one race Sunday night, a flock of birds is released in Pennsylvania. The first birds back to New York average more than 60 miles an hour.

Tyson describes himself as an enthusiastic amateur who wants to move up in the game. "I'm competitive," he says, and he also says he's willing to do the cage-cleaning, feeding and general grunt work with which everyone starts.

What he has, everyone agrees, is the passion.

He talks about how, back in those early Brooklyn days, he was the kid everyone used to beat up. Pigeons became his refuge until one day another kid grabbed one of his birds and broke its neck. Infuriated, Tyson started his firstever fight.

The Tyson here, though, is almost eerily calm. He's worked for years not to be "an angry person," he says, and by the evidence, he's succeeding.

He doesn't talk much about the boxing years, though he does have an interesting riff on Cus D'Amato, the trainer and surrogate father who steered him to the championship.

D'Amato taught him to win, says Tyson, but also instilled a level of self-confidence that Tyson says grew into the arrogance that ultimately got him in much of his trouble.

These days, he says, he's content - though we don't see enough of his life outside the pigeon world to know exactly what that means.

The omission seems deliberate, since this six-part series clearly tries to keep the focus on the birds, not Tyson.

He does not give any sign of relapsing to the days when the wheels always seemed to be coming off.

At least in the opening round, it's a feel-good story, and what makes it more satisfying is that in contrast to so many reality shows, the people here feel genuine, with no sense they're performing for the camera.

This one's a contender.

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