Robert Helenius, Finn ranked 6th in world.
He must be a great fighter, owing to his record. But...not that impressive to look at. They call him the Nordic Nightmare.
Robert Helenius fights for Team Sauerland, which is one of the biggest boxing stables in the world, if not the biggest there is.
This particular training camp lasts for seven weeks.
Fortunately it is not 24/7, and he can get away at the weekends to his family in Gatow in Berlin.
Usually a title fight will be preceded by a four-week intensive training camp, and then we’re talking about a whole different level of discipline.
During that time, there is no leaving the sports complex at all.
“Yes, it’s very tough to be away from the family like that. But I’m a lazy trainer. I need a coach who is getting at me, who is pushing me the whole time”, Helenius acknowledges.
He speaks very warmly of his fiancée, and of course it is nice to hear this side of a boxer coming to the surface.
Sandra Helsing is a former Porvoo policewoman, who nowadays looks after the family’s practical day-to-day matters.
When the subject comes around to Helenius’s two children, Chillie and Kingston, the big boxer is suddenly like putty.
The strange forenames each have a back story.
When 3-year-old Chillie was still in her mother’s tummy, she was already a peppery character, and she got her name before she was born.
Two-year-old Kingston, on the other hand, is laid back and loose like a reggae beat.
“Takes after his dad”, observes Helenius drily.
The strict regimen laid down by Helenius’s coaching team has paid dividends.
The 27-year-old Finn has climbed in short order into the upper branches of the world heavyweight tree.
The WBO, one of the four major world championship sanctioning organisations, has ranked Robert Helenius as the No.1 challenger to the Ukrainian Wladimir Klitschko, the current holder of the WBA (Super), IBF, WBO, IBO, and Ring Magazine Heavyweight World Championship belts.
These days it is hard to keep track of the relative standings and credibility of the various boxing organisations, but the list kept by Ring Magazine is probably the most authoritative of the lot, and on this table, Helenius is ranked five down from Wladimir Klitschko, making him the 6th best heavyweight on the planet.
The sixth best in the world!
This is an achievement that is actually rather hard to get one’s head round.
I mean, think about it: Joe Louis, Rocky Marciano, Mohammad Ali, Joe Frazier, Larry Holmes, George Foreman, Mike Tyson, Evander Holyfield, the Klitschko brothers (Wladimir’s older brother Vitali is ranked at #2)…
The undisputed heavyweight champion has traditionally been up there on the pedestal as one of the world’s greatest athletes and the world’s biggest sporting star.
And our Robert Helenius, he’s perhaps just a couple of knockouts away from that title.
Of the Finnish heavyweights of yore, only Gunnar Bärlund (1911-1982) has been ranked higher by Ring Magazine (in 1938 he was seen as the second challenger to Joe Louis’s title), and Bärlund has had a statue erected to him in Helsinki - and he also has an annual amateur tournament named after him.
“Yup. It is pretty neat”, says Helenius a shade absent-mindedly, by way of comment on the buzz surrounding him.
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Originally Posted by Loser
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