Mikkel Kessler is the most popular sportsman in Denmark, says Peter Sloth

The pay per view tickets for Danish boxing fans wanting to watch the May 25 super middleweight clash between Carl Froch and Mikkel Kessler are 500 Danish kroner. That's almost £55.

Another indicator of Kessler's popularity comes when he's compared to other Danish athletes. When tennis player Caroline Wozniacki a couple of years ago reached the final of the US Open the viewing figures reached the same figure that saw Kessler lose to American super middleweight Andre Ward in 2009. The big difference was that Wozniacki's tennis final went on free TV, and Kessler's California clash with Ward cost the viewers £55!

Critics

Of course nobody can be friends to everybody. A very small minority of the Danes are not fans of the Viking Warrior. For some it is because they don't like his noisy and colourful family. For others it is because they don't sympathise with the fact that Kessler, just before receiving a fee of $5m for his 2007 fight with Welsh super fighter Joe Calzaghe, moved in a hurry to Monaco. In the tiny state he was charged 0% tax on those $5m. In Denmark - maybe the country in the world with the highest tax rates - he would have been charged more than 60% in income tax for the whole amount. But most Danes don't mind about noisy family members or tax speculation as long as Kessler returns from London after the May 25 fight with another victory against Nottingham fighter Carl Froch. The whole country will stop for those seconds or minutes the fight will last, following the glove duel on pay per view, on online live commentary or - for the luckiest ones - live at the O2 Arena. And for the record: Kessler has moved back to Copenhagen and will therefore pay Danish tax on his fee, an amount estimated to be £1.6million. Sixty percent of that amount and the Danish state will be able to pay for a lot of school teachers, kinder garden assistants and so on...
Peter Sloth is a boxing reporter and sports writer for Danish newspaper Ekstra Bladet