Original subtitles

Ludvig Borga!

The Hell Raiser from "Hellsinki"!

The look and the presence he had was world class.

[Indistinct commentary]

He was big, he was tall, he was muscular.

He was a real life bad ass.

But the reason why we're doing this television program

now is not because he was a great wrestler that was

a standout for years, but because he was

in wrestling, and then did...

some other batshit stuff!

[Narrator] Wrestler Tony Halme,

aka "Ludvig Borga,"

the "Hell Raiser From Hellsinki,"

lived a life of controversy...

He made people around him uncomfortable,

but not in a good way.

And crime.

You don't know that story?

He got deported from this country for weapons.

[Finnish news]

Driven by a desire for fame, Tony took his

strongman persona to the extreme...

[Speaking Finnish]

He wanted to be the person that people went,

"Could you believe he said that?"

"Could you believe he did that?"

And into the corridors of political power.

That guy's gonna be an elected official?

He wanted to be famous, so that's how

he was gonna do that in Finland.

[Speaking Finnish]

Until his relentless pursuit of the spotlight

led to infamy and ended in tragedy.

Uppers to wake up, downers to go to sleep.

And now, you've gotta have something to

make you feel alive during the day.

[Speaking Finnish]

What more did he have to live for?

The dream was over.

The image he had created for himself

became impossible to maintain.

He looked like a villain, he sounded like a villain.

But, unfortunately, in real life,

he was a villain.

♪

♪

This man is a powerhouse!

Ludvig Borga!

In the summer of 1993,

wrestling fans witnessed the debut of Ludvig Borga,

an arrogant new villain from Finland.

Whoa! This guy's a tough dude!

The foreign heel in professional wrestling has

been a standby since the turn of the 20th century.

They were exotic, they were mysterious.

They were not like us.

"You ain't from around here, are you, boy?"

♪

I'm Jim Cornette, and I was working for

the WWF when Tony Halme, aka Ludvig Borga,

made his brief but spectacular run.

The fans could take their animosity out by

booing the anti-American.

Maybe you sang that Russian national anthem

just one time too many.

Vince McMahon loved the

foreign heel concept so much

that if we didn't have a problem with a country,

he would figure one out.

From "Hellsinki"...

Ludvig Borga!

So, suddenly, you get this guy

named Ludvig Borga from Finland,

and because he had an accent...

that was close enough for Vince McMahon.

"I can do something with this guy."

USA stand for in my continent:

"You stink a lot."

He was gonna get a great push because it was

easy to position him as a villain.

I'm Jim Ross, and I was an on-air talent in 1993

for the WWE.

One way to get a villain noticed

is you have him break a streak.

And, Tatanka had a winning streak.

Tatanka wins the...

Being the Native American representing America,

the fans just connected right to me.

I'm Tatanka. An official legend of WWE.

Here comes the Native American!

I was running on an undefeated streak

for two years.

Tatanka with a clothesline!

And the office came to me, they said,

"We're really looking to do something big

with Ludvig Borga."

[Cheering]

Locking up now, Ludvig Borga.

[Tatanka] In our business, it's called rubbin'.

Oh!

You get out there and you rub shoulders with Hulk Hogan,

that stardom rubs off on you.

...over the top rope to the outside!

I can't believe that!

Ludvig had a tremendous opportunity.

Oh, no! Did you hear that?

The best thing for you to do is sell it,

and they wanted me to sell it.

So, Ludvig threw me in the ring,

and then pinned me with one finger.

Look at this!

His finger on Tatanka's chest!

[Match bell ringing]

[Shouting commentary]

By beating me, it instantly puts Ludvig

right at the top of the ladder.

[Off-screen: Speaking English]

Ah, now looking at it, no.

♪

The power of that WWF TV is tremendous.

Having a fan base that buys your action figures

and sells them out.

But remember, we're on the road 300 days a year.

So, you're in the locker room a lot.

You know, they want guys who are gonna be in there,

friendly with everybody, 'cause now you can do

business together.

But, Ludvig was never that guy.

Not that the guys had anything against him.

He just never allowed the guys to get close to him,

let's put it that way.

Borga had a great look.

But, he was a miserable human being.

People didn't want to work with him.

He made people around him uncomfortable.

And then, when we finally realized he had the

"SS" tattoo on his calf...

things started going downhill from there.

For the kids out there who weren't around,

the SS was

Hitler's private army that committed many of

the atrocities at Hitler's behest in Nazi Germany.

You can't show something like that on television in

1990-something in America, so they said,

"Cover that shit up."

One of the boys, if they would've seen that,

I guarantee you someone would've said something.

So, obviously it was kept under cover.

We made a mistake in hiring him.

He slipped by us.

Tremendous strength and agility!

Ah!

[JR] It wasn't done on purpose.

[Commentary] Ludvig Borga in complete control!

We just didn't do a good job of vetting him.

You can imagine how some of the Jewish talents

in the locker room reacted to it.

It's not right to impose upon them such negativity.

We needed to get rid of him.

The fact that he had it to begin with indicated that

probably something was going on up there that maybe

we didn't want to delve into much deeper.

Drop it! Come on, ref!

Tony Halme's childhood was defined by bitterness,

brawls, and resentment.

One thing to know about Tony is that

he came from a broken home.

♪

His parents divorced when Tony was just two years old.

His father had a problem with alcohol and,

it seems like his mother did, too.

I'm Mikko Marttinen.

A journalist and a writer of

Tony Halme's biography.

The other important thing to note about Tony is that he

kind of struggled between two language communities.

His mother was originally a Swedish speaker,

and decided to put the boys into

a Swedish speaking school.

This made Tony feel like an outsider

from very early on in his life.

[Speaking Finnish]

He yearned for respect.

He felt that he was looked down upon

because of his poverty.

Years before he ever stepped into a wrestling ring,

Tony constructed a new ultra-masculine persona

for himself, which he referred to as the Viking.

As soon as Tony stepped out to the street,

he became the Viking.

♪

He had the word Viking with a helmet tattooed on his arm.

He started to talk tough.

Robbed people.

And, getting into street fights.

In the newspaper archives, I found a very old item.

♪

It says that two karate guys were just beating up

everybody in the bar.

It turns out those karate guys were Tony

and his best friend, Christer.

[Laughs]

♪

Tony was fascinated with movies.

One movie that really made an influence on him was

"Taxi Driver."

Maybe Tony saw himself as a same kind of

fighter as Robert DeNiro.

And, when he saw that movie, he decided that

he will move to the United States someday.

In 1986, Tony heads to Los Angeles,

searching for fame, fortune, and a new direction.

He wanted people to like him.

People like you because you're famous.

And I think that was...

a shield for a lot of insecurities that he had.

♪

My name is Deedee, and I was once

married to Tony Halme.

Size-wise and personality-wise,

Tony was larger than life.

I fell in love with him pretty quickly.

When we got married,

he wanted the music to be "God Bless America."

He wanted to be famous.

In America.

He wanted to be a movie star in America.

And he heard about Gold's Gym in Venice Beach.

He attempted to be a bodybuilder,

but he just didn't have the shape of a bodybuilder.

He had a big belly.

He was, he was a big guy everywhere.

[Mikko] It became almost like an obsession for him.

To be as big as possible.

And steroids helped.

[Deedee] He had a shoebox,

and it had steroids from Russia.

♪

It was clearly nefarious.

I'll never forget, one of the packages

was for horses.

♪

His ambitions were to be a star.

Whatever way that came to him.

He got some small roles for Little Caesars.

Tip.

He was in a national ad in some beer commercials.

Get back to work!

And eventually, some, some small roles on TV as well.

No one argues with Curly.

-[Laughing] -Ah, yeah.

Hanging in the Gold's Gym, a lot of people told him that,

"You should go into wrestling.

You could really earn some money with this,"

and they got Tony interested.

He did some wrestling shows with Herb Abrams, UWF.

♪

[Deedee] He had a costume made,

and it was Tony as the Viking.

I told you, I'm gonna hurt every pencil neck,

every pipsqueak who steps in my way.

And there's only one way they're gonna leave the ring,

is on a stretcher, hurt.

I think UWF should start to sell life insurance too.

[Deedee] It was silly, it was very silly.

Japan was probably his first big wrestling shows

that he did.

Tony Halme!

Tony told everybody that he was a successful boxer

in Finland, and none of this was true.

He had never had a boxing fight in Finland.

But New Japan made his gimmick about that.

[Japanese commentary]

Tony Halme had become a star in wrestling in Japan,

where they liked big guys,

giant monsters battling it out.

King Kong and Godzilla.

[Japanese commentary]

The Japanese wrestling circuit is really tough.

It was very punishing for the wrestler's body.

And Tony was very candid about starting to use

strong painkillers during his time in Japan.

It really became a habit for him.

Somewhere along the line, Tony's opportunities

in Japan started to dwindle a little bit.

His attitude was not great.

When I met Tony,

the way that he spoke to you made you understand

that he really held himself to be somebody.

But, you have to know who else is in the room.

My name is Michael Majalahti,

alias the "Rebel Starbuck."

I'm the pioneer of Finnish professional wrestling.

Tony would wrestle tags alongside guys like

Scott Norton against the Japanese contingents.

From what I've heard, Tony Halme

rubbed some people the wrong way, ah, ethnically.

He had sympathies towards the

white brotherhood.

He had a lot of friends who were skinheads

and whatever else.

The wrong thing came out of his mouth,

and a fight broke out between Scott Norton

and Tony Halme at the bar.

♪

I think that enough was enough.

And now, it was judgement day.

Tony had a very famous incident with Scott Norton,

an American wrestler.

Some people say that Tony kind of

sucker punched Scott Norton.

Then, again, Scott Norton says that

he cleaned Tony Halme's clock.

This was a problem for New Japan.

You know, two of their foreign stars

were not getting along.

[Speaking Finnish]

And that was the end of Tony in Japan.

With Tony back in California,

his wife rethinks their three-year marriage.

There were a lot of things going on at the time

that I overlooked.

But, it wasn't until

he cheated on me that I knew

what kind of person I was married to.

As much as I didn't want to be with him anymore,

you know, I still loved him.

And, at the point that I decided I needed

to divorce him, he got very emotional and,

"Oh, my god, I'm so sorry I did this to you," and,

"I'm gonna take my truck and drive off the pier."

And I just said, "I can't do this anymore."

I woke up to...

a lot of things that he lied about.

But I never imagined that he would turn into

the person he turned into.

As soon as we split up,

that's when he became Ludvig Borga.

[Cheering]

We're back, ladies and gentlemen!

[Cheering]

In 1993, Tony joins the World Wrestling Federation

as a main event villain,

but his run with the company

lasts less than a year.

[Match bell ringing]

After they gave him that push of defeating me,

they were building him up for Lex Luger.

But, the fans never got behind it.

♪

They were giving him all the vignettes and

all those interviews, and bringing him into TV,

but his interviews were just like...

Blah.

This time it's gonna be hard and tough,

and I'm gonna finish this American so-called hero

once and for all.

Sometimes he's speaking Finnish to the camera.

He says things like...

[Speaking Finnish]

Which is Finnish for like, "I'll rip your ass off,"

or something like that.

You heard that didn't you? Whatever you say.

Most people in the US don't even know where

Finland resides on the world map.

So, why should anybody feel threatened by who you are?

America stinks.

Lex Luger stinks.

So, Americans choke on this.

He lacked the ability to connect with the audience.

The nuances of being a pro wrestler,

he did not possess.

And then, we saw the SS tattoos on his calf,

and understood his philosophies.

They were not very healthy.

How do you justify it?

How do you justify an SS tattoo,

based on what that stood for, and still to this day?

I think the reason he got the tattoo on his leg was because

he got attention for being fascinated

by the Nazi thing.

I remember he spent some time in Russia and,

he came back with all kinds of military memorabilia

that was used by,

I guess Nazis, or I don't know.

But one of the things was this creamer pitcher,

and on the bottom it had a swastika on it.

And it was dated like 1941.

And, I had used it as a flower pot in our house.

I didn't know that they were Nazi material.

I was just a young, naive person.

I didn't know shit from shinola at that age.

[Laughing]

♪

But, why would somebody get an

"exit only" tattoo on their rear end?

Why?

♪

What the ---- would propel a man

to tattoo "exit only" above his asshole?

Especially when you're the size he is and

looked like that, do you really need to have

written instructions for people

not to ---- you in the ass?

Does there have to be a written warning?

What the ----'s going on with that?

And who are you making that statement to

when you're walking down the street?

You're so anti-homosexual that you have "exit only"

tattooed above your asshole. Who's gonna know?

"Ah, don't ---- him in the ass."

[Cheering]

While wrestling at Madison Square Garden,

Tony injures his ankle in a match.

With Tony being injured,

he was unceremoniously dropped and,

I don't know if any of the audience

really missed him either.

Whatever the reason became...

was good to get rid of him.

I'm glad he didn't get hired on my watch.

And he pretty much self-destructed

once he left WWE.

♪

So, if WWE is no longer an option,

where do you go from here?

So, Tony's looking for work.

And he gets signed to fight in UFC.

And now he tries to make the transition to the UFC.

And Tony doesn't take the training very seriously.

[Speaking English]

His opponent ends up being Randy Couture,

who will become a legend of the sport.

Two first-timers to the UFC.

Let's go!

And we're looking at a big size difference here.

Prior to the fight, he had said, "I will never tap out.

I would rather get out of there dead."

But, you know, as soon as the choke is on...

[Indistinct shouting]

And he's out, very quick.

He ends up losing in one minute.

That's the end of his MMA career.

♪

Tony went back to LA.

He was getting married again.

This time with a Finnish woman.

The police came and raided their house.

♪

The SWAT team, and...

guns and bullet proof vests, and shields.

♪

Tony was charged with trafficking

controlled substances, which was steroids.

And, possession of an illegal firearm,

an Uzi.

When we were together, Tony liked to shoot guns,

'cause they gave him power.

I never imagined that he would become

a guy that got in trouble with guns.

[Speaking Finnish]

The laws were very clear.

If you have been convicted of a firearm felony in

the United States, you should be deported.

And that's what they did.

And, he could never go back to the United States again.

He went back to Finland

to chase the big and famous dream.

Tony's quest for fame in America is cut short,

forcing him back to Finland

to pursue his dream once more.

I think it was a really hard blow for Tony to

be forced to leave the United States.

He wants to be famous, he's a showman.

So, he's ready to try everything.

He was the famous heavyweight

professional boxing champion,

and all of us kids loved his character in the

Finnish version of the TV show "Gladiators."

[Speaking Finnish]

♪

And then, Tony gets his segment in a Finnish

talk show where he records a single.

Hoo-hah!

Where he, in a very comical way,

brags about how manly he is.

[Speaking Finnish]

It sells very well, and eventually

he will record a whole record.

At this point, Tony Halme is one of the most

famous people in Finland, in fact.

Everything Tony touches is gold.

To the Finnish people, he really was superhuman.

[Cheering]

He achieved something.

He was, he was in Hollywood.

He went to do Die Hard 3.

Wait, well, Jesus, don't open it.

It's a bomb.

Even though it was a side role, he was a goon,

that broke the news barrier as far as

making Tony Halme a household name.

♪

He had learned in wrestling how to sell his character,

and he decides to write

an autobiographical book.

Almost like a political manifest.

It's Tony's life story,

with a lot of violence, a lot of sex.

But, a lot of it's made up

and embellished.

A lot of the stories are offensive to many people.

He uses the "N" word a lot.

He's very traditional when it comes to

roles of men and women.

There's a lot of people who hate him,

but there's certainly a big segment of the

Finnish population that really looks up to him.

Tony's polarizing infamy attracts Finnish

power brokers eager to cash in on his natural charisma

and headline -grabbing antics.

[Speaking Finnish]

They contact Timo Soini, who is the leader of

the very small True Finns party,

which is really struggling at that time.

He joined the political party in Finland that

were the trouble makers.

And he was a trouble maker.

[Speaking Finnish]

But, let's say the SS tattoo.

How it didn't play into his political career is-

I think it's a question of timing.

During that time,

Finland changed in a number of ways.

The Cold War ended,

we joined the European Union.

Immigration began rising.

And this coincided with an economic recession.

As you can guess, a lot of these immigrants became

scapegoats for the troubles that people had.

♪

I think that a lot of Finns were

very proud of being Finnish.

So, when you do away with national identity,

a lot of people saw it as a threat.

So, that's why I believe that he was forgiven.

Let's take care of our own

before we take care of anybody else.

We weren't as liberal then as a nation as we are now.

And he had charisma,

especially for the Finnish people,

for the Finnish audience. They understood him.

The closest equal to Tony Halme

as a politician is Donald Trump.

The feelings they evoke in their audience

are much more important than facts.

And if you look at it, so many parallels

in pro wrestling and politics.

It's all about how to manipulate people's emotions.

Tony said what he thought, and he didn't have

any regard for political correctness.

[Speaking Finnish]

He also didn't care if the things that he said

were true or not.

Didn't he say that Tarja Halonen,

our president at the time,

didn't he say that she was a lesbian?

[Speaking Finnish]

He talks about immigration in a way that is

actually extremely offensive and racist.

[Speaking Finnish]

[Cheering & applauding]

Following a campaign fuelled by nationalist pride,

Tony Halme stuns Finland's political establishment

with a landslide victory.

Incredibly good numbers. It was gangbusters.

People just voted for this guy en masse.

[Speaking Finnish]

If you had said in the locker room at the time,

"See that guy over there?

He's gonna be elected to political office,"

you would've said, "Somebody needs to treat this guy."

If you'd have said, "He's going to be a

nationalist right-wing lunatic," I'd 'a said,

"Okay, I'll buy that," but politician,

I wouldn't have got that far.

Now in office,

Tony escalates his divisive rhetoric.

[Speaking Finnish]

A lot of people hold Tony Halme to be a...

I guess a white supremacist would be the correct term.

[Speaking Finnish]

♪

[Speaking Finnish]

At this point, he had already developed a serious

alcoholism problem on top of his drug addiction.

[Speaking Finnish]

By 2003, Tony's increasing substance abuse

becomes impossible to ignore.

[Speaking Finnish]

♪

Tony had promised to have an exhibition match

against his old friend and sparring partner.

The fight became quite brutal,

especially for Tony,

who really got a beating in that fight.

After the fight, Tony starts drinking.

♪

He goes to Tampere where he has some friends.

Keeps on drinking.

After about two weeks of this binge,

he finally returns home to his wife.

They develop an argument.

The wife says, "We are through.

I have had enough of your drinking."

Tony grabs...

a handful of medicine, swallows them.

The wife, of course, wants to call the 9-1-1.

At some point, Tony gets hold of a gun.

The wife tries to grab the gun away from Tony.

And, during the struggle the gun goes off.

[Gunshot]

[Gunshot]

To this day, we're not sure

whose finger was on the trigger.

But, the wife flees the apartment,

calls 9-1-1.

She goes back inside the apartment and

she finds that Tony's unconscious.

He has swallowed some of his own puke,

and doesn't really show any signs of life, really.

[Speaking Finnish]

At this point, Tony is in a coma.

There are all kinds of infections,

and he has suffered from lack of oxygen,

so he's in a pretty critical condition.

[Speaking Finnish]

He really struggled for his life

for the first couple of weeks.

Eventually they managed to revive him.

But, by this point it's clear that he has suffered

some serious brain damage.

He can only talk like one word at a time,

and he starts the slow process of recuperating.

[Speaking Finnish]

But, he's never back to his old, colorful,

quick-thinking self.

People could see that he was

not the old Tony at all.

His marriage ended.

That made things only worse.

He was depressed.

[Speaking Finnish]

Tony resigns from parliament,

and receives a four-month suspended sentence.

Now on disability, his health struggles

push him deeper into isolation.

[Speaking Finnish]

Things were getting bleaker all the time.

He was really addicted to pain killers.

Used a lot of alcohol.

He continued to do steroids as well.

But obviously they don't help you

if you cannot do the, do the training.

[Speaking Finnish]

He kept doing these appearances in little bars

around Finland, and that was the only really...

thing that got him out of the house at that point.

[Speaking Finnish]

It appears that he got in debt also

because of the drugs that

he had to buy from the black market.

[Speaking Finnish]

♪

You've been to the mountaintop and you have to

come down 'cause there's nowhere else to go.

For a lot of people, I think it's too much.

You'd rather end it...

than become nobody again.

♪

[Speaking Finnish]

♪

♪

♪

♪

[Speaking Finnish]

On January 10th, 2010,

Tony Halme is found dead by suicide,

bringing a sudden end to his turbulent life.

Why did he arrive to that decision?

Obviously, we can only speculate.

But, it must have been very hard for him

to see himself in the condition that he was,

which was so far removed from the ideal that

he always held of a big, strong man.

[Speaking Finnish]

Not surprised.

Didn't shed a tear.

What does a person do to another person

where you don't even get emotional about that?

And there is the big end!

'Cause he was a piece of shit and he burned the bridges.

You know? He treated people horribly.

♪

[Speaking Finnish]

When the man hates like this man,

you're not gonna beat this man.

So, what is his legacy? [Sighing]

Here comes Borga, and... oh!

Ludvig Borga stumbles a bit. Oh, no.

He was best known as Ludvig Borga.

A nondescript heel

from Finland,

who never really connected with the audience.

I was ringside.

Can't remember a Ludvig Borga match.

Because...

he just didn't stand out in that environment.

He was an asshole.

And, that's where I'll leave it.

♪

Tony brought everything that he had learned in the

American show business and wrestling to Finland

at the right time, and really revolutionized

Finnish politics in a lot of the same ways that

Donald Trump changed politics in the United States.

And this really paved the way

for a lot of politicians that ran on

anti-immigration themes everywhere in Europe

during the next couple of decades.

[Crowd chatter]

[Effort grunting]

[Speaking Finnish]

-[Cheering] -1, 2, 3!

[Match bell ringing]

♪ [Triumphant] ♪

♪ [Somber] ♪

I want people to know that there was a good side to

this person, you know, and I wouldn't have fallen in love

with somebody that was a complete monster

the way that we know of him now.

But I think he destroyed himself...

in every way that a person could do that.

♪