Keith Jardine’s viking quest

Chuck Liddell might think he can dance, but I’m pretty sure he doesn’t have the kind of moves Keith Jardine does.

MMA Fanhouse has a good interview with Jardine, who fights Thiago Silva at UFC 102: Couture vs. Nogueira on Saturday. I especially like his comments about if his played up his personality to be as colourful and distinctive as his physical appearance that it would help his career, bring him more fans, maybe even get him a title shot sooner, but that it’s just not his nature: “I don’t need to get all WWE on anybody.”

In that interview the subject of Viking techno comes up. Jardine is a bit of a YouTube celebrity thanks to his crazy misspent youth and a certain dance video: “I think it’s funny, man. When people ask me on the street and stuff, I always tell them that, Yes, it was me, and it was a long time ago, and that kind of stuff. And I have a lot of fun with it.”

And while there’s an online petition to have Jardine borrow a page from Anderson Silva’s pre-fight playbook and dance his way into the octagon, Jardine says there’s not much chance of that happening. “I think I’d have to take some techno dance lessons first. I think I’d rather come out to … I like weird music, I’d rather use Tom Waits or something first. I don’t know, man, I don’t know. We’ll see. Maybe. I like practical jokes, so we’ll see what happens. I don’t know if they’ll let me fight in those shorts, though.”

Bringing things back to MMA, here’s Jardine’s third-ever pro fight. It’s from February 2002, against future Pride FC and Sengoku slugger Travis Wiuff in the quarterfinals of an Extreme Challenge eight-man heavyweight tournament in Iowa. The action starts at around the 2:18 mark and stops just a handful of ticks later. I had to replay it several times just to figure out what happened. BTW, the winner of the tournament was Ben Rothwell, who fights Cain Velasquez at UFC 104.

And finally, here’s Jardine being rather insighful about his upcoming bout with Silva.