Sports
Sports stars visit Moscow
NZPA-Reuter Moscow The world heavyweight champion, Mike Tyson, slipped into Moscow practically unnoticed, only a few hours before Pele, the Brazilian soccer legend, arrived yesterday to official fanfare.
"Tyson and Pele both here at the same time — this is incredible," a Soviet sports fan exclaimed upon hearing the news. “I don’t think we have ever had two superstars of that calibre in the Soviet Union at the same time.” But Moscow — where the latest episodes of the Tyson drama have not made a ripple — seemed totally unaware that a king of the ring had descended on the Soviet capital to escape press scrutiny and rumours that he tried to kill himself.
Yesterday morning, nobody appeared to notice Tyson as he waited for a taxi outside his hotel off Red Square. When he flew in from New York with his wife, actress Robin Givens, only a few Cubans and Africans recognised him at the airport. An hour before his plane landed, the Soviet Sports Committee
denied any knowledge of his impending arrival. Professional boxing is almost unknown in the Soviet Union and the Soviet media have made no mention of Tyson's advent. But word leaked out in advance, and the 22-year-old boxer told Western reporters who greeted him at the airport that he felt good and hoped to fight his next challenger, the British heavyweight Frank Bruno “in a couple of months." Their clash was postponed after Tyson broke his hand in a street fight in August. Last week, after he smashed his car into a tree, headlines screamed that he was suicidal. But in Moscow, Tyson again denied the reports. Pele, meanwhile, arrived to attend the opening in Moscow of the Soviet Union’s first golf course. The official “Tass” news agency said he was met at the airport by Lev Yashin, the retired Soviet goalkeeper.
"Pele is still number one for us,” an awed Soviet soccer fan said upon hearing that the famed striker had returned to Moscow after an absence of more than 20 years.
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Press, 12 September 1988, Page 6
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341Sports Sports stars visit Moscow Press, 12 September 1988, Page 6
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