9 Wrestlers Who Became MMA Fighters
7. Ludvig Borga
The tale of Tony 'Ludvig Borga' Halme would almost be comedic if it wasn't ultimately so tragic. A show-fighter and an amateur boxer in his native Finland, Halme quickly earned a reputation as a legitimate brusier, in particular thanks to frequent bar-room brawls in which he was seldom bested.
Halme's hard-hitting persona was ripe for Japan's brand of strong-style pro-wrestling, and the Suomi slugger enjoyed success in a number of shoot fights opposite NJPW tough-guys such as Shinya Hashimoto and Seiji Aoyagi.
The less dangerous but equally lucrative draw of pro-wrestling soon saw Halme make the transition to worked bouts, and it wasn't long before the WWF came calling. Being a wrestler from outside North America in the early-'90s however, Halme had to abandon his straight-up shootfighting persona and was rechristened as the dastardly foreign heel, Ludvig Borga. A Finnish patriot decrying the evils of the USA, the gimmick was predictably execrable.
Nevertheless, company bigwigs were high on Helsinki's Halme to the point that he was penciled in for a world title reign. An ankle injury put paid to such plans, and Halme was out of the industry by 1997, where he made an abortive attempt to resume his MMA career. The former Borga lasted just a single match in UFC - a comprehensive defeat to a little known rookie by the name of Randy Couture.
The pair's careers could hardly have diverged more dramatically. Whilst Couture eventually established himself as one of MMA's all-time greats, Halme left the sport for good. A bully since childhood, the Finn had little in the way of other skills, and put the boxing gloves back on before finding another less violent outlet for his anger: whipping up the disenfranchised sections of Helsinki's suburbs into a ferment as a politician in the nationalist True Finns party.
Halme's time in office was littered with controversy - he was roundly admonished for a seemingly homophobic attack on then president Tarja Halonen - as his personal life gradually spun out of control. Riddled with alcohol and drug abuse problems, and an array of mental health issues that destabilised an already chaotic life even further, Halme eventually killed himself with an unlicensed handgun.