KOLBEINN KRISTINSSON wants what any boxer his size wants: to be heavyweight champion of the world.
At 6ft 6ins and 250lbs, and with an undefeated record, both his looks and his stats are marketable. He has a worldclass coach in SugarHill Steward and a respected promoter in Dmitriy Salita.
There’s just one problem: professional boxing is banned in his country.
Iceland outlawed the sport entirely in 1956, citing its dangers, and only relented on the amateur code in 2002, under the supervision of the Icelandic Sports and Olympic Association. Since then, the ranks of unpaid competitors in a country with a population of just 370,000 has swelled to an estimated 700. That may not sound like a lot, but for perspective, that same proportion of the UK