It's a bitterly cold late winter evening as the former Finnish heavyweight champion gears up for his comeback fight. Jukka's no stranger to the Helsinki Ice Hall. This is where he won the championship belt... before promptly losing it to his cocky rival in their rematch, not six months ago on a night not unlike this one. The man secured his revenge in a suitably devastating fashion, knocking Jukka unconscious two minutes and twenty two seconds into the first round, leaving him flat on his back, spread-eagle, completely out cold. To add insult to injury, now Jukka's been relegated to fighting the undercard bout for his rival's main event, fighting some rookie from the states on his international debut...
Curt climbs into the ring, six feet and three inches of solid muscle, and Jukka's stomach feels like it drops through the floor. This man's no stranger to aggression, as becomes apparent as he dominates the first round. Going into the second, Jukka's got an increasingly bad feeling. Curt's a powerful puncher, and even his glancing blows leave Jukka dazed, until a solid left rings his head like a bell. He wavers, doubles over, stumbles back against the ropes as he narrowly dodges one of Curt's vicious haymakers. His opponent holds nothing back, laying into Jukka over and over until a blistering left hook finds its mark, followed by a devastating right that wrenches his head around so far it looks like might come clean off, as his knees buckle and he flies limply through the ropes, knocked out cold once again as his fans gasp in shock at the complete demolition of their hometown hero by this powerfully-built rookie.
Jukka's rival, meanwhile, went on to score another first round knockout over his own opponent. As he said afterward, with a glint in his eye, when asked to comment on the former champion's downfall, "If I were him, I'd quit boxing. You don't send a lace-maker to do a welder's work."
As the news put it the next day, Curt won by knockout "in the most brutal way possible" two minutes twenty-six seconds into the second round, knocking Jukka's lights out so hard he "literally flew out of the ring" and, as one reporter phrased it, "to the shadow realm."
