Finland Today spoke with Finnish heavyweight boxer Robert Helenius about his upcoming fight in the Olavinlinna Castle. We also take a look at who exactly is his opponent Mika Mielonen.

Finnish heavyweight boxer Robert Helenius standing in front of the Olavinlinna Castle in August 2018. Photograph: TONY ÖHBERG/FINLAND TODAY

When Finnish heavyweight boxer Robert Helenius suffered a dramatic loss to the former heavyweight champion, Deontay Wilder, last October at the Barclays Center in Brooklyn, he said he was done with the life in ring.

A boxer for 25 years, hundreds of amateur fights and 35 professional bouts of which 31 have been wins in his resume, Helenius, 39, now seemed to want to focus on life outside the squared circle. He has a wife and three children in the Åland Islands. He’s involved in the construction business.

Helenius packs a punch, he is two meters tall and has been constantly improving in his later years while chasing the heavyweight champion title. Don’t get me started on the thundering liver punch and swift footwork … jabs that sting like a thousand nettles! Yours truly has experienced most of the tasty knockouts ringside.

But last October Helenius was sent to the canvas in the first round and afterward gave no definitive answer if he would continue again.

Now, 10 months later, on August 5, he will. He will step into the ring against another Finn, Mika Mielonen, 42, in the Savonlinna castle, known as Olavinlinna, in the heart of the region of Lake Saimaa in South Savonia.

“My warrior spirit needs to fight,” Helenius said to me recently while he was on his way to a practice session.

Helenius shared with Finland Today that when it comes to boxing he has stayed active in the past eight months, not so much by punching the bag or hammering sparring partners, but by focusing on lifting weights.

“It has helped me to keep my head straight.”

At this writing, Helenius has begun working on boxing again. Not that he would be studying new tricks, and this reminded me of what his trainer, Johan Lindström, said to me long ago:

“There’s not much you can teach Robert Helenius about boxing. But you can push him to be a more physically and mentally strong person.”

Certainly, Lindström, a devotee to the art of fight sports, healing and mental stamina, has kept Helenius’ head in a great place. Helenius will step into the ring with the eye of the tiger, or as I wrote eight years ago: with eyes as a flame of fire.

But what do we know about Helenius’ opponent Mielonen?

Mielonen began his professional boxing career when he was 40. He thought it was better now than never. He spent his youth in Savonlinna playing ice hockey. Between 1998–1999 he played 27 matches and spent a total of 135 minutes in the penalty box.

I discovered that in a local paper called Itä-Savo. Later Mielonen began studying martial arts and lifting weights. He also found himself in the ring as a sparring partner against various boxers. “I was the punching bag when they prepared for fights,” he said in the article. “At some point, I thought that I could try boxing myself.”

So far, Mielonen has taken six fights and knocked out all six of his opponents.

He said in the interview that his plan is not to score points in the ring but to “hurt his opponent” with his punching power. Mielonen is 190 centimeters tall, just 10 centimeters shorter than Helenius. Mielonen weighs about 115 kilos, the same as his more experienced counterpart weighed last year against Wilder.

When asked what Helenius thought about Mielonen’s opponents, he said “they were semi good.” Certainly, not prominent fighters like Adam Kownacki, who Helenius beat into a pulp in Brooklyn in Las Vegas in October 2021.

One of Mielonen’s fights can be seen on YouTube against Demir Gulamic from Bosnia and Herzegovina. It was held in Järvenpää in March.

The clip shows Mielonen moving slowly and belting Gulamic with jabs, crosses and hooks. When Gulamic attacks Mielonen, he seems to catch the second wind and slips away with hurried feet.

Mielonen won the bout in the last minutes of the fourth by a technical knockout.

After analyzing Mielonen’s methods, Helenius said that his opponent could be dangerous if he would connect with one of his haymakers.

In some circles, the fight has been compared with a similar setup where a big-name Finnish heavyweight boxer Jukka Järvinen faced then-unknown Tony Halme who entered the ring from the world of pro wrestling. Halme knocked Järvinen out in the first round. The year was 1997.

Helenius is no newcomer to the castle of Olavinlinna. Before his run in the States, Helenius faced Belarusian Yury Bykhatsou in the medieval setting in August 2018. Here’s a recap of the end of the fight:

AAAAAAAA!” Bykhatsou screamed and attacked again.

Helenius stayed away and kept belting.

The big hall with stone walls was packed with a shoulder-to-shoulder crowd. They were screaming and stomping their feet on the wooden floor of the stands and from below, where beer was served, it sounded like a hundred galloping horses.

“Hit him!” the crowd screamed.

Helenius did.

“More! More!”

Helenius gave what they wanted.

After six full rounds, the fight was over.

Bykhatsou hung his head low, defeated.

Helenius raised his hands for victory.

He smiled.

It had been a while.

In our recent interview with Helenius, he said to me that he will enter the ring at this stage of his career for one reason only: “I want to get a feel for boxing again. If the feeling is right, I will decide if I will once again go after the belt.”

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