If you thought that having a perennially elite lightweight like Joachim Hansen, and a former ADCC champion like Jon Olav Einemo would enamor Norway with MMA, you thought wrong.

It seems every few months, the Norwegian media finds some sort of story on MMA. At best, they depict outstanding competitors like Hansen and Einemo as questionably legitimate athletes fighting for acceptance in an underground sport. At worst, MMA is decried as an anti-social pseudo-sport that is somehow at odds with the country's rich social welfare.

This eyeroll-inducing tale falls into that latter category. After all, Norway is one of the few remaining countries in the world in which professional boxing is still banned. The others include Iceland, Iran, Cuba and North Korea.

Sunday, Norway's biggest print newspaper Verdens Gang ran an article which put MMA at the center of national election controversy. With political season in full swing as the nation's Sept. 14 election approaches, incumbent Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg and his National Labour Party have taken to the use of online ads to engage the net-surfing public. The fly in the ointment for their advertising approach? The Google-generated ads caused Stoltenberg's promo materials to appear on MMA Web sites and blogs, including MMAMania.com. Naturally, this is grounds for public outrage.

Here is a translation of Verdens Gang article, provided by Anders Auberg:

Stoltenberg's commercial on a web page [sic] for a brutal martial art
by Lars Akerhaug

(Caption): Google error. Sunday morning Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg appeared on the pages of an online newspaper which writes about the extremely brutal martial art, "Ultimate Fighting Championship."

The National Labour Party's Google-generated advertisements caused the campaign commercial to go astray.

"The reason for this is that we have bought Google advertisements that are targeting Norwegian users. We have a filter, but it is obviously not good enough. We will fix this right away," National Labour Party info-leader Sindre Berg told VG Nett.

Ultimate Fighting Championship is an organization which promotes fights for the fighting style "mixed martial arts."

The Google filter is meant to prevent that the Prime Minister's face appears on porn pages and other web pages with undesirable content. The Prime Minister's office does not wish to comment on the Google error and refers us to the head of the information department at the National Labour Party.

Removed

Once VG Nett made a phone call, the National Labour Party handled the situation and got rid of the unfortunate advertisement.

Info-leader Sindre Berg stresses that there is no real danger of Jens Stoltenberg's face appearing on porn pages or other web pages with questionable content.

"No there isn't any danger. We have had a quite elaborate screening regarding these items so it was an error, our screening has been thorough. "

Brutal martial art

Ultimate Fighting Championship is a very brutal fighting style based on a combination of different martial arts.

In the martial art, one of the outcomes is that the fighter can defeat the opponent via knockout. Pro boxing which takes place with without headgear and can result in a knockout is forbidden in Norway due to medical reasons.

The only Norwegian participant in the torturous UFC tournaments is Dan Evensen from Arendal.

Three questions: One, can our Norwegian fighting faithful write Mr. Akerhaug some intelligent, well-reasoned emails to alert him of his wrongs? Two, when will Norway move in the direction of Scandi brother Sweden in regards to legalizing pro boxing and MMA, allowing potentially prosperous national circuits to flourish? Three, why not Sherdog.com, Google?