411’s Dark Side of The Ring Report: ‘Ludvig Borga: Hellraiser from Helsinki’

-Welcome to episode two of this newest season of Dark Side of The Ring. I saw one clip to hype this show and it was Cornette discussing a tattoo that Borga had. I couldn’t stop laughing, so this one could be out there. Let’s get to it!

-As always, Chris Jericho is our narrator.

-We start with this warning: “The Following Episode Contains Content About Suicide and Suicide Ideation. View Discretion Is Advised.”

-In the Summer of 1993, Ludvig Borga made his WWF debut. Jim Cornette is up first and talks about the long used foreign heel gimmick in pro-wrestling. Cornette was in the WWF for Tony Halme’s debut as Ludvig Borga. Cornette says that Vince loved the foreign heel gimmick so much that if we didn’t have a problem with a country, he would figure one out. So, Ludwig had an accent and thus was a foreign menace from Finland.

-Jim Ross next and he says one way to get a villain notice is to have them break a streak. That brings us to Tatanka, who notes he had an undefeated streak for two years. He was told they wanted to do something big for Borga. Tatanka talks about giving the rub and how if you rub shoulders with Hulk Hogan it takes you up a higher level. Beating Tatanka is the same as beating Hulk Hogan! Ludvig ends Tatanka’s win streak and pins him with one finger. He says it put Ludvig at the top of the pecking order. Tatanka tells the producer looking at it now, Ludvig wasn’t the right guy to end his streak.

-He mentions Ludvig was never the guy to get close to the boys. JR notes that he had a great look, but was a miserable human being and he made people around his uncomfortable. “When we realized he had the SS Tattoo on his calf, thing started doing down hill.” Cornette gives us a history lesson the SS being Hitler’s private army who carried out a lot of his atrocities. JR: “We made a mistake in hiring him. He slipped by us.” He says it wasn’t done on purpose, and brings up the reaction of the Jewish talent. Cornette mentioned earlier they had him cover it as much as possible because it obviously would not sit right with the boys. Cornette says the fact he had it was a sign something was wrong upstairs.

-Tony came from a broken home and his parents divorced when he was two years old. Both his parents had a drinking problem. We meet Mikko Marttinen, a journalist and writer of Tony’s biography. Tony’s mom was Swedish speaker and put the boys in a Swedish speaking school. That made Tony feel like an outsider.

-Next is Christer Markusas, a childhood friend of Tony, and we get subtitles for him as he doesn’t speak English. So that means a lot of pausing from me to catch what he is saying. He says the local people shunned them because they were Fenno-Swedish and their kind usually lived in the suburbs. “When you were a Fenno-Swedish, people thought that you were….How could I explain it discreetly? That you were a f**got.”

-We get old audio of Tony from 2003. He talks about his mom choosing the bottle over her sons and he left home at 14-15 years old. Tony moved to Christer’s place and started taking up boxing and other combat sports.

-Tony constructed a persona for himself called The Viking and this was year’s before he became a pro-wrestler. He tattooed “Viking” on his arm and would get in bar fights and street fights with Christer by his side. He loved movies and was a big fan of “Taxi Driver.” That movie made him decide he would move to the US one day.

-He moves to LA in 1986 and we meet Deedee, who is Tony’s ex-wife. She says Tony was larger than life and she fell in love with him quickly. Tony wanted to be a movie star in America. He headed to Gold’s Gym in Venice Beach and wanted to be a bodybuilder, but she notes he didn’t have the shape as he had a big belly.

-Tony started using steroids and they came in packages from Russia. One of the packages was labeled as being for horses. Makes sense! He did get some small roles and we see him on ‘The New WKRP In Cincinnati’ from 1992. People in the gym told him he should get into wrestling.

-That leads to him joining UWF and Herb Abrams. Oh boy! He was The Viking in UWF and he got his first big break in Japan. Tomy lied to everyone that he was a boxer and he never had a boxing match. Japan loves their giant monsters and Tony fit right in and we see him in a match with Vader. He became a star in Japan as they note how tough wrestling can be in Japan. That leads to a pain killer addiction.

-Michael Majalahti is next and he is the founder of Slam! Wrestling Finland. He tells us Tony would speak about himself like he knew he was going to be somebody, but Michael would tell him you have to realize who else may be in the room. Tony had a lot of friends that were skinheads and he had sympathies towards the white brotherhood. The wrong thing came out of his mouth and he got into a fight with Scott Norton, who had enough of his ethnic slurs. Michael says it was judgment day. Probably next the best idea to mess with Scott Norton.

-Commercials!

-Back to the incident with Norton. Nobody knows the story as each side says they controlled things and won. That was the end of Tony in Japan though and he went back to California.

-His ex-wife says she overlooked a lot of things, but then Tony cheated on her and she knew the kind of person he was. She still loved him, but didn’t want to be with him anymore. Tony became emotional as she filed for divorce and he told her he would drive his truck off a pier. “As soon as we split up, that’s when he became Ludvig Borga.”

-Tony joins The WWF in 1993 and his run lasts less than a year. He was pushed liked crazy as he was supposed to be a top star against Lex Luger. They talk about how rough his promos were and he would speak half English and half Finnish. Someone points out a lot of people in The US can’t find Finland on a map and have no clue why someone from Finland would be threatening. I had that though as a 12 year old, though I knew where Finland was on a map. Geography was one of my favorite subjects and I studied my globe like crazy as a kid.

-JR says Tony lacked the ability to connect with an audience and then we get back to the SS tattoo. His ex-wife says he got the tattoo because it got him attention and he was fascinated by Nazis. She continues that he spent time in Russia and came back with memorabilia and had a creamer pitcher that had a swastika on the bottom and it was dated 1941. She used it as a flower pot as she was naive and didn’t “shit from shin-o-la” at that age.

-Here we go and go find this clip as Cornette’s delivery is something. The ex wife questions why someone would get an “exit only” tattoo on their ass. Cornette: “What the fuck would propel a man to tattoo exit only above his ass hole (we see photos of the tattoo). Especially the size he is and look like that. Do you really need written instructions for people not to fuck you in the ass. Does there have to be a written warning?” He continues: “You are so anti-homosexual that you have exit only tattooed above your ass hole. Who’s going to know? Aww, don’t fuck him in the ass.”

-Tony gets injured in a match at MSG and that dropped him off the show and nobody missed him. JR: “I am glad he didn’t get hired on my watch.” He was gone from WWF and went off the rails.

-He decided to hit up The UFC and doesn’t take it seriously. His first match is against Randy Couture, who is having his first match. Oh man! That had to suck! We get footage and he charges and Randy takes him down rather easily. Shocking! The SS tattoo is clearly visible here! Tony told people he would never tap out and would rather die, but he gets choked out and taps in one minute. That’s the end of his MMA career.

-Tony goes back to LA and his house gets raided by the police. He was charged with trafficking controlled substances (Steroids) and possession of illegal firearms. Tony loved guns because they gave him power. He was in prison and people recognized him as Ludvig Borga. They took him in and he was deported to Finland.

-Commercials!

-Tony took his deportation hard and still wanted to be famous, so he joined Finland’s version of American Gladiators. He was a Viking character again, known as Viikinki. We meet Marianne Taiga, who was a friend and colleague. She was one of the female gladiators and they became fast friends. She says Tony was in his element and this was the Tony he wanted to be.

-Next he recorded a song in Finland that sold well as it was him bragging about having testosterone ane being a Viking and mountain of steel. This is wild! He is now one of the most famous people in Finland and was superhuman to the people there. He went on to do Die Hard With a Vengeance and we see him in the movie opposite,Samuel L Jackson. It was a small role as a good but they went crazy for it in Finland.

-Next he wrote a book and made up a lot of the stories and they were offensive. A lot of people hated him, but there were many who bought into his idea of how men and women should act. We meet Veikkko Vallin, former advisor and business partner. They met when Veikko’s company was making a protein shake that was catered to large, muscular men. This led to Tony getting into politics and they were trying to find him a party, and he decided to mention a “kind of nazi party.” Veikko notes there isn’t any kind of support for those kinds of beliefs in Finland. Good to know!

-Timo Soini, former True Finns Party Leader, next and he was the leader of the small party that was struggling at the time. They built Tony his own website and we get back to the SS tattoo. The Cold War ended and Finland had changed. There was also a recession and immigrants became scape goats for troubles the country had. Huh! The country wanted to take care of their own before anyone else and Tony had charisma when dealing with people. Someone mentions there are so many parallels between pro-wrestling and politics. Uh huh!

-Tony had no time for political correctness and didn’t care if the things he said were true. It seems he called their president at the time a Lesbian, and thought they would cut that out, but it was a live interview. This is wild as he would go on rants about immigrants increasing crime in Finland and his racist jokes would sometimes do well with his audience, so he would lean into them more. We see an old interview talking about baboons, but he still believes in democracy.

-Election Day and he wins a spot in Parliament in Helsinki by a landslide. “Everything went well until Tony got elected for Parliament.” This is things going well?

-Commercials!

-Tony ran on National Pride and won in a landslide. People voted for him in mass. Cornette says he would buy someone telling him that Tony would be a nationalist, right wing lunatic, but wouldn’t have bought him being a politician.

-His advisors were asking him to tone things, but he always said out loud what other people only thought. He was viewed as a white supremacist. We see an interview he did with a reporter’s eye looking on in disbelief as Tony says, “If you call me a Nazi or something else, it’s a bit different than calling a ni**** a ni****.” Christer notes that Tony told him the important thing was that he was always in the headlines. Tony continued in the interview, “I am totally sure that every single one of the 90 Jews would’ve preferred to lick someone’s ass than be gas chambered.” The reporter is just aghast!

-He had a new wife and things were well financially. From the outside things looked good, but there was trauma. He had become an alcoholic on top of his drug problem. He had a bowl full of a mixture of drugs and hormones and would take them around the clock. He would tell friends that “life was chemistry.”

-2003: His substance abuse was impossible to ignore. People started resigning because they had enough. Tony promised to have an exhibition boxing match against a friend and former sparing partner. Things got out of hand and Tony had his ass handed to him. After the fight he starts drinking and goes on a two week binge. He goes home and gets into a fight with his wife. She is going to leave, so Tony takes a handful of his pills and swallows them. She wants to call an ambulance, so Tony grabbed a gun. There was a struggle and the gun goes off.

-Commercials!

-Next week: Vader!

-To this day they don’t know who had their finger on the trigger. Tony had swallowed his own puke and was unconscious. It obviously is news all over TV in Finland. He was in poor condition and struggles for life for the first couple of weeks. He is saved, but has suffered brain damage.

-Tony says in an interview he still has no memory of that date or the days prior. He was no longer the Tony of old. His marriage ended and he became depressed. He was charged in the shooting incident and says he will resign if found guilty of any charges. His story to the judge was that he was working on a role as a SS prison guard at a camp in Porvoo. His role required that he had that Luger.

-He does resign and gets a 4 month suspended sentence. He is on disability and his health causes more depression. He was still drinking like crazy and addicted to pain killers. He started to lose his psyche when he couldn’t lift weights like he used to. He would make appearances at bars and that was all that got him out of the house. People were laughing at him though as he would get drunk. He got in debt for the drugs he was buying off the black market. They drugs were 50 Euros for 1 pill and were the kinds of drugs that caused hallucinations.

-Michael says coming down the mountain is a lot to handle and some people would rather end it than become a nobody again. Christer went to Tony’s house for his birthday, but couldn’t get in the door. He called and Tony didn’t answer so he called the police. They break in and Tony was found dead after shooting himself.

-We see the news announcement on Finnish TV. He was 47 years old! His friend notes that Tony said he would rather live a year as a lion than 40 as a mouse. His ex says she was not surprised and did not shed a tear. “He was a piece of shit and burned the bridges. He treated people horrible.” Some trace it back to his mother and the issues he had with her. They think his childhood traumas shaped him as an adult.

-They discuss legacy and one says he was Ludvig Borga: a non descriptive heel from Finland, who never connected with the audience. JR: “He was an asshole and that is where I will leave it.”

-In Finland he is seen more as someone that changed politics in Europe. Someone even says what Tony did to change politics in Finland is what Donald Trump has done to change them in the US. A lot of politicians in Europe ran on anti-immigration platforms for the next few years following Tony’s surprising win.

-His ex wants people to know there was a good side and that is what she fell in love with, but he destroyed himself in every way a person can.

-If You or Someone You Know is Struggling With Thoughts of Suicide, There is Help Available.

-The 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline provides 24/7, free and confidential support for people in distress, prevention, and crisis resources for you or your loved ones. Call 9-8-8 and via online chat at 988lifeline.org

-There was a lot to take in here. I will say outside his brief run in WWF, I never thought of Borga before or after. So all this was new to me outside of hearing about the SS tattoo. The political stuff was clearly feeds into what is happening in the world today, but also as noted, it was happening in Europe for years after Tony’s win. Like anything else, politicians see something is working and they will try to do the same. The talking heads were a good group as they found a lot of people close to Tony and then you had JR and Cornette to cover the WWF run. The WWF run was so brief that it was a blip in this story, but that is how most people would know Tony. This episode clearly fit the Dark Side name and I found myself captivated by the episode this week. I suspect any comments could get political so please keep it as civil as possible. Thanks for reading!