Tapia's nickname of 'Mi Vida Loca' has fit him perfectly in good and bad.

Almost every Friday, Brian Kenny and I host the studio portion of Friday Night Fights from the ESPN headquarters in Bristol, Conn. Two Fridays a year, however, the Friday Night Fights studio goes on location, usually to Las Vegas. These road trips are scheduled around superfights. So, for instance, we hosted FNF from Vegas the night before Oscar De La Hoya fought Felix Trinidad, the night before Lennox Lewis and Evander Holyfield fought for the second time, and the night before Lewis knocked out Hassim Rahman in their rematch.

I look forward to these trips, as you might imagine. Vegas is an exciting town. All the night spots and clubs and casinos and parties. And all the boxing people. Look one way and you see Sugar Ray Leonard talking shop with Emanuel Steward and Wesley Snipes. Look the other way and Floyd Mayweather Jr.'s posse is getting into it with Diego Corrales' posse.

I met Mike Tyson face-to-face for the first time in Vegas, when he stepped to me over a comment I made about him on FNF. After we cleared the air, we talked for a while about boxing and his career. He told me that he used to watch my public access boxing show "Max on Boxing" when he lived on 2nd Avenue in the early-1990's.

It was an unhappy day for me when the Nevada State Athletic Commission made it clear to Tyson that they were not going to grant him a license to fight, because this meant that Tyson's title challenge of Lewis could not take place in Vegas, and consequently one of my expense paid vacations -- did I say vacations? I meant business trips -- would have to be to some less desirable place. Turned out to be Memphis. Memphis in June. Other non-Vegas FNF locations have included New York (the night before the first Lewis-Holyfield fight) and California (the night before Shane Mosley took on De La Hoya).

But Vegas is where we usually set up shop, because Vegas is where most of boxing's biggest events take place.

We were out there last September for De La Hoya-Fernando Vargas. In between fights (Julio Diaz decisioned James Crayton over 10 rounds in our main event), Brian and I interviewed fighters and trainers. We had Vernon Forrest and Winky Wright on our set together to talk about their careers, and to get their takes on the upcoming junior middleweight superfight. We also had Floyd Mayweather Sr. and Johnny Tapia on to do the same.

Brian and I are big Johnny Tapia fans, as are most boxing people. He always fights with his heart on his sleeve, and it is difficult to love boxing and not love him. At a party the night before, I met Johnny in person for the first time. (I had interviewed him on-air via satellite before that.) In the flesh he was just as authentic and spontaneous a conversationalist as he is in the ring. He talked about the dirty side of the boxing business and how it upset him. He talked about his impending challenge of champion Marco Antonio Barrera.

Johnny was 35 -- still is. I knew I was talking to someone who fights with the energy of a man 10 years younger, but his face looked like that of a man 10 years older. I could see the physical scars of years of ring wars. And he was never still. His behavior betrayed his damaged emotional being, the result of a very hard life. Mother murdered, drug and alcohol addiction, jail. Johnny left me with the impression that he was in the throes of a fight against relapse into substance abuse.

How he even tries to struggle in Sin City is beyond me. Las Vegas is a great place for a party, or for a young man to find trouble, or for a world class featherweight to find sparring. But it is probably not the greatest place in the world for a recovering substance abuser.

On the FNF set the next night Johnny was still perpetual motion. At one point a fan who was watching the interview from the foot of our platform yelled up "Johnny, you're an inspiration! You came from nothing and you made it!" Johnny looked concerned and answered back "Don't say that -- I haven't made it anywhere yet. I struggle everyday."

Of all of the experiences I have had out in the desert, that one left the most indelible impression. The apparent inevitability of Johnny Tapia ending up as a tragic figure. How much he must struggle to live everyday. How he must constantly make the right choices. How acutely aware he is of what he is up against. How strong his demons must be.

He has seemed to cope with those demons by bonding with them in the ring, by fighting with demonic energy. He is a fierce warrior, not without a little bit of a Raging Bullish sado-masochistic streak. This was evident in his last go against the younger and better Barrera, a battle Johnny seemed to enjoy despite taking the worst of a bruising 12-round fight.

The details of what happened to Johnny Tapia several days ago are sketchy. Reports are unclear, but involve "drug paraphernalia," a "stand-off with police," and a "fall in his home." He wound up in the hospital in critical condition.

He is out of the hospital now, having spent the weekend on life support. After his interview on FNF in Vegas that day, I remember thinking to myself that it will not end well for Johnny Tapia. Had he never come home from his "fall," I would have regretably been right. Thankfully, he survived to struggle another day.

Max Kellerman is a studio analyst for ESPN2's Friday Night Fights and the host of the new show Around The Horn.