Never mind that some of the Soviet kids thought he was Pele, the former Brazilian soccer great, who also was in the Soviet capital.
Tyson also underestimated the media attention, which followed him from New York, where he had been dogged by reports of erratic behavior over the last few weeks.
One published account labeled as a suicide attempt Tyson's recent crash into a tree in his BMW, which KO'd the champ and briefly hospitalized him.
"I don't want to talk about it," Tyson said yesterday as he playfully put an inquisitive newsman into a gentle but viselike headlock. "I didn't try to commit suicide."
"Bad news sells, good news don't," he said when pressed about a newspaper account that he was despondent over domestic strife with his wife, actress Robin Givens. The couple arrived in Moscow three days ago.
Later, at the opening of Moscow's first golf club, Tyson was a bit more forceful. "Look at me. Take a good look. Do I look like I want to commit suicide? It does not look like it, does it? No way."
Givens, who has come to Moscow to film an episode of her Head of the Class television series, accompanied her husband on the walk around the square and a visit to Lenin's mausoleum, then rejoined the television crew as it was shooting a scene near colorful St. Basil's Cathedral.
Tyson, wearing a black knit leisure suit and white running shoes, also showed off his newly liberated right hand, which had been in a cast since he fractured a bone during a street scuffle last month with former (and perhaps future) opponent Mitch Green.
"I took it off myself yesterday," he said, adding that the elbow-length plaster had been due to be removed in a few days. But the champ was indefinite about the date of his postponed fight with British heavyweight Frank Bruno.
"No time soon," he said. "I don't know when, maybe a few months. I ain't worried about it, because no one can beat me."
