Who’d Bet Against The Ultimate Fighting Championship’s Mr. Finland?

The Ultimate Fighting Championship was born out of ultra-violence and became an acceptable sport and now has competitors from all over the world including Makwan Amirkhani; Mr. Finland

Martial arts, not to be confused with the similarly spelled skills that will please your partner in the bedroom, were popularized by the famous inscrutability and reality-defying speed of Bruce Lee, a man whose talent for the fighting disciplines was manifestly undeniable but whose acting instincts left even nearby furniture to comment upon just what a woodentop he could be once the cameras were upon him.

The Ultimate Fighting Finn
• Makwan Amirkhani is “Mr. Finland”
• 11 wins and 2 losses over four years
• Fourth Finnish competitor in the UFC

“Enter The Dragon” might be a classic of combat cinema, but Bruce wasn’t going to be winning any Oscars for his performance, and that really didn’t matter as a whole generation of kids all but instantly tried to emulate his moves on their classmates. This mostly seemed to consist of attempting to chop at the neck of the person nearest to you and shouting “Hiiiiiiii-Jaa!” as if they’d just turned into Miss Piggy attacking the issuer of an unflattering comment.

Of course some tried harder than others, but if you’ve never seen a ten year old at recess attempt a flying kick whilst in possession of no talent, experience or aptitude, you’ve simply not lived. The halfhearted launch which is more like a skip, the pathetic semi-successful attempt to lift and extend the leg, and the inevitable loss of balance and collapse to the ground having made no contact whatsoever with their target, is entirely amusing to watch.

Indeed I’m entirely of the belief that the school assembly in which we were warned against employing any use of fighting skills against our fellow pupils came not out of a wish on behalf of the school to stop boys fighting with each other (boys do that sort of thing) but out of a desire to stop the school nurse, a delightful old duck whose entire medical repertoire consisted of telling boys to bathe it alternately in hot then cold water, from having to deal with quite so many groin strains.

The Ultra-Violence Of The UFC

It has been many years since I was at school and walked the playground with that semi-expectant pensiveness of one of nature’s easy targets, but I’m willing to bet that those leaping about with too much hostile energy these days have little idea of who Bruce Lee even is, and rather than emulating this legendary master they are, in fact, merely replicating what they’ve seen in that most fascinating of modern inventions, the UFC.

The Ultimate Fighting Championship came about in 1993 stemming from a proposal made by Art Davie to John Milius and Rorion Gracie for an eight-man single elimination tournament called “War of the Worlds” (in one of those desperately unoriginal moments of naming I personally believe deserves the application of the death penalty) and transformed into the SEG produced UFC 1 at the McNichols Sports Arena in Denver on November 12th of the same year. It was supposed to be a one-off, it just didn’t end up like that.

With the tag line “There are no rules!” (which wasn’t strictly true) the sport had a reputation for ultra-violence the sort of which parents despair and complain and children absolutely love to watch and attempt to emulate. Indeed gambling news of this violence would only increase viewer numbers the warnings screened before UFC5 were deadpan serious in their warnings of the “violet nature” of the sport, something you’d think most people would have figured out from the word “fighting” in the name.

Indeed John McCain, well known Republican failure, tried to have the sport banned, with 36 states doing so, calling it “human cockfighting” and the squeeze of this spreading ban lead to the sport developing far, far more rules than it had hitherto adhered to and indeed developing into a sport rather than merely a staged event. Some might see the ban on groin strikes, headbutting and kicking a downed opponent in the head as a destruction of the essence of the battles, but at least it kept it from being banned altogether.

Mr. Finland Comes To Fight

These days UFC has, to a large degree, got its act together and stopped being one. No longer a freakshow circus of carnage the championship is now quite a well respected sport having survived the growing pains of such a controversially violent pastime. UFC 100, just 16 years after the first UFC, the mainstream pick up was manifest and evident with 1.7 pay-per-view buys and the obvious interest of ESPN in proceedings. This is why UFC is now as discussed on the internet as the US election is, only with fewer threats of violence.

This explains why in the last few years fighters from all over the world have emerged to do battle, and why people who like to bet on sports in Finland will already be aware of their leading exponents in UFC, a man called Makwan Amirkhani. Makwan, who has the perhaps rather unfortunate nickname of “Mr. Finland” garnered after he placed second in a who’s-a-pretty-boy beauty pageant in his home country, has only been in the sport four years but is already making his mark.

His last fight lasted just eight seconds as he destroyed Andy Ogle with a flying knee and several punches, a result that backed up his prediction prior to the fight in some style, and indeed won him performance of the night, and with 11 wins and just 2 losses he’s doing Finland proud and even keeping his good looks. “There aren’t many fighters with nice faces,” he told the media, “Most of them have scars, but I don’t, and I won’t.” Which is confidence for you.

Unsurprisingly Mr. Finland has attracted many Finnish fans (some of them more into his aesthetics than his fighting ability) and despite the massively stupid, and now entirely illegal, Finnish gambling laws more than a few won money on his last fight on gambling sites like ComeOn! Sportsbook which offers an excellent array of books and odds on all the Ultimate Fighting Championship bouts wherever they might be happening around the world.