If you go looking for the hot spots for MMA in Europe, you’re likely going to start with Russia and England and make your way to Ireland shortly after. 

After thinking for a while, you might come up with Sweden, which has produced talents such as Alexander Gustafsson; Ilir Latifi; and the Teymur brothers, David and Daniel. Even though Sweden, especially under the Allstars Training Center, has been gaining notoriety, one of its own found MMA down a different route. 

Leading up to his fight at next weekend's UFC 224 against Thales Leites, Jack Hermansson spoke with the Top Turtle MMA Podcast about how he found MMA only after leaving his home country. 

“When I came [to Norway], just for work, I started training with, among others, Joachim Hansen,” Hermansson said. 

While he found a Pride legend to train with early after the move, the transition to Norway wasn’t specifically for training. In fact, the work he was searching for was of a much more docile nature. 

“At the start, I started working as a substitute teacher at a school and later on I worked in a pet shop,” Hermansson said. 

Neither job was what he was destined to do, although he did enjoy each of his posts. It started getting a little harder to fly under the radar when people noticed Mr. Hermansson was the one beating people up on the weekends. 

“Suddenly people started to whisper and point around at me,” he said. 

And even though it wasn’t the job he initially came for, finding Hansen’s team made it so that Hermansson would never leave. 

“He and his crew had some really good training, and since that day I was stuck here,” he said. “Now it has developed into one of the leading teams in Europe.”

Despite the fact that many people don’t know about the Norwegian scene, Hermansson doesn’t think it’ll be long until they do. In fact, he feels the regional scene is already way above where people realize.

“MMA isn’t that big in Norway, but we have a really good circuit in Oslo,” he said.  

And he just might be the one to show people the light.