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Escape to Victory: How Sylvester Stallone and Ipswich Town can inspire Fabio Wardley to Joseph Parker triumph
You never see Paul Cooper in Escape to Victory. At the very least, you don't see Paul Cooper with the impression that you're meant to see Paul Cooper.
The Ipswich Town shotstopper features in the 1981 prisoner-of-war film - a bona fide Bank Holiday classic these days - as a double for Sylvester Stallone.
The Rocky star, a triple Academy Award nominee, was famously no natural when it came to shooting his scenes as a goalkeeper for John Huston's feature.
As Hatch, an American who joins Michael Caine's ragtag band of POWs for a game against their German captors, he is meant to stick out like a sore thumb.
Cooper filled his boots on the pitch for the climactic game, perhaps one of the most successful adaptations of the beautiful game for a cinematic canvas.
A year later, he helped mastermind his team's own such feat in the 1981 UEFA Cup Final, a result that remains a glorious crown jewel for the Tractor Boys.
Having snapped a 3-0 win at home in the first leg, the Blues leaked four in a hectic return fixture against AZ Alkmaar at Amsterdam's Olympic Stadium.
Goals for Frans Thijssen and John Wark proved crucial for a 5-4 aggregate, but it was Cooper's heroics in a final quarter-hour that wrote him into folklore.
Bobby Robson's side could have been down and out, pre-game expectations of triumph almost blown away by the diligent workmanship of their opponents.
And yet Cooper's gloved fists delivered when it mattered most, to ensure Ipswich would stay standing as they weathered the storm and emerged triumphant.
If this sounds uncannily like Fabio Wardley's tenth-round turnaround against Justis Huni in June at the same venue, then perhaps the ghosts of Portman Road linger within him.
Much as with Stallone and his Allied teammates, much as with Cooper and his Ipswich stars, his one-punch stoppage paved the way for his own escape to victory.
But after such heroics, the questions remain ahead of his biggest test yet against Joseph Parker at London's The O2 - and the answers will be tough to find.
Wardley's path to the summit of the heavyweight division has been less orthodox than many of his contemporaries and rivals, both a gift and a curse to his talents.
He cut his teeth in white-collar boxing, a side-hustle to a day job in recruitment almost a decade ago, and turned professional after less than a handful of bouts.
Without a decorated amateur career, perhaps a degree of snobbery has greeted the star's ascent through the divisions, viewed through the sport's hermetic lens.
Mark Robinson/Matchroom Boxing
Wardley has frequently projected a quiet intelligence inside and out of the ring; an innate comprehension of his skills, their limitations and the workarounds he crafts.
The end result speaks for itself. Twenty professional fights, nineteen wins, eighteen knockouts and a solitary draw. He was British and Commonwealth champion.
Indeed, the only stumbling blocks he seems to have hit are Frazer Clarke and Huni. The former took him the distance over a bruising encounter in March last year.
Wardley responded in even more brutal fashion seven months later, with a first-round knockout that left his opponent with a crumpled jaw and in need of surgery.
Huni proved more taxing this summer, a late replacement for Jarrell Miller, whose status as a relative unknown to European audiences belied a fierce ring IQ and grit.
In driving rain on the turf at Portman Road, he looked to have got the better of the home favourite, up on the scorecards and heading for the WBA interim title.
Instead, as Stallone and Cooper before him, Wardley engineered a moment of brilliance that would befit any blockbuster final reel, a right hand felt through the ages.
Sport seldom throws up the perfect moment. For all the you-cannot-write-this-script hyperbole, it is frequently a cruel and unforgiving discipline with more lows than highs.
Wardley has found the biggest high of his career thus far. But in chasing the next one, in the willingness to prove his worth among the top table, he gambles on his future.
Parker, in many ways, is the comeback blueprint; an ex-world champion who has rebuilt and refashioned his career to return from the fringes with eyes on the summit.
Paradoxically, he is arguably bigger now than he was in his WBO prime, before Anthony Joshua ended his sub-two-year reign as world champion on points in 2018.
The string of top-ten foes he has cleaned out since - Deontay Wilder, Zhilei Zhang - represents a higher class of rival, matched by a studiously burnished star wattage.
Richard Pelham/Getty Images
That form earned him the most recent mandatory shot at Oleksandr Usyk, and his undisputed crown. Only the Ukrainian's wish to delay has held that bout.
Parker has been forced to play the long game in recent years, prolonged absences from the ring enforced as he waits on other opponents. Now, he is fed up.
The gamble is mostly on him, when it comes to Wardley; a risk-reward play that, if derailed, likely ends his chances of becoming world champion ever again.
But he is the pre-fight favourite with good reason. For the first time in a while, the Briton arrives to a bout as the underdog, looking to prove that he belongs.
Across his career so far, Wardley has answered those doubters and climbed the domestic ranks to reach the global stage. Now, he sits on the cusp of greatness.
Calling upon the spirits of Cooper, Stallone and more this weekend, he could make history. But one thing is for certain - he will not leave that ring without putting it all on the line.
Watch Parker vs Wardley live on DAZN
Joseph Parker and Fabio Wardley fight on Saturday, October 25, to become the WBO mandatory challenger to Oleksandr Usyk. Watch the fight and undercard live and exclusive on DAZN PPV.
