There is an incredible Swedish holiday tradition that few humans outside of the Volvo manufacturing country are aware of. Over half of the country drops whatever pieces of IKEA furniture they had in their hands and sit down as a family every December 24th at 3pm and watch Donald Duck cartoons for multiple hours. Here’s the kicker: most of the cartoons are not even about the holidays. This has been going down for over fifty years. Some people love it, some hate it and feel jailed by the animated duck:
“At 3 o’clock in the afternoon, you can’t to do anything else, because Sweden is closed,” “So even if you don’t want to watch it yourself, you can’t call anyone else or do anything else, because no one will do it with you.”
No one in Sweden on December 24th at 3pm will do anything with you unless it involves animated ducks. Think about that for a bit. Now, the country that produced the dude who the Nobel prize was named after will begin a new custom; MMA has been legalized in Sweden. In the liberal fashion the country is already known for, the Swedish MMA Association has had professional MMA approved by the Martial Arts Board in Sweden and claim they have the safest form of MMA because of their “security spray”.
Many argue that this poses a greater security risk for MMA practitioners, now that the rules were not previously available in Sweden approved.
– No, that’s just the opposite. Now we can within the country, with the incredible security apparatus we have, to train our elite active in a completely different way. They may be a natural development curve, where it can no longer afford to let a relatively inexperienced athletes throw themselves onto the international scene just to get matches. We’ve probably even before the most widespread security spray all over thesports Sweden, I believe. In addition, we have probably the world’s safest MMA in our country’s borders.If you had to take out the crystal ball and predict into the future of MMA in 2011,how would it look like then?
– If I had a choice? Then we would have a well established amateur league with many practitioners. We would have one SM with very good activity on, with live media coverage of course. And I would hope that we get a foreign organization that is organizing a gala in the largest sports stadium. Then even the galas that have already arranged to continue to develop.Is it reasonable to believe that?
– We have all our dreams, right?Why has there been a better situation for the MMA League to establish international professional MMA in Sweden?
– To get a complete racing ladder. It is our duty as a union to ensure that our athletes are given the chance to compete, evolve and climb in their sport, linked to ensure that sport is as safe as possible. It’s not that the delegation handing out permits left and right,but in this case, it is about acceptance, not only of regulation, but by a comprehensive solution that aims to ensure that athletes do not compete on a level that they are not at.Stefan Stenudd, chairman of the Swedish Budo & Martial Arts Federation also think it is a funny statement
– This is of course a good news for Swedish MMA. It also means a great responsibility, a responsibility that the MMA League previously shown that they are ready to take.
Look at that, an entire article about Sweden and I didn’t make one meatball reference. [Source]
