Australia loves a good underdog story. It's why we so eagerly identify as "battlers" in everyday discourse; the notion that we're noble spirits fighting against a seemingly unbeatable, omnipresent force is practically built into our national DNA.
It's little surprise, then, that the tale of Leicester City's still-cooling Premier League title victory should be a yarn to have captured the nation's attention. Social media feeds — at least mine, anyway — are overflowing with excitable chatter about the British team that could, and it's easy to see why; even if you don't really care about a lot of sports, Leicester's ultimate victory is nothing short of remarkable. A few short months ago, they were 5000-1 long-shots at even breathing the same air as a champion team. Right now, they're peerless.
Since we're all riding the feel-good buzz of seeing Leicester stick it to the critics and emerge as the wholly unexpected victors in the Premier League, it felt like a good time to revisit some other stunning upsets from throughout (sometimes fictional) history, not just the world of sports, to draw that high out a little longer.
C'mon. Smoke a bowl of the warm-and-fuzzies with us.
guy in judas priest tribute band becomes singer of judas priest, 1996
There is nothing ostensibly wrong with tribute bands. But, at best, they are an earnest (if sometimes misguided) way for passionate fans to wear their pride on their sleeve tatts, getting up in front of people to pay homage to musicians for whom they would sell their firstborn; at worst, they're bad karaoke, but nobody's drunk enough for it to be excused.
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Without having ever witnessed them in person, it's probably safe to say that British Steel, a Judas Priest tribute band from Albany, New York, were a pretty decent imitation when the real Judas Priest came looking for a replacement singer in 1996 following the departure of Rob Halford, because the band's frontman, Tim 'Ripper' Owens, ended up getting the job of actual frontman of Judas Priest.
It was a position the super-fan would hold for the next seven years, before Halford reunited with his old bandmates in 2003 — but the wheels were in motion, and Owens has since become a fixture of several heavy bands (as well as guest-performing with the likes of Sepultura) in the wake of his call-up to the big leagues.
Nothing gold can stay, and all that, but damned if Owens didn't justify the existence of every covers band on the planet as a potential hail-mary should the lead singer of any other famed band depart.
Well, unless you're AC/DC.
the mighty ducks d. hawks, 1992
Don't get me wrong; I love The Mighty Ducks (aka Champions). There is nothing quite like seeing a convicted substance abuser redeeming himself through the innocent violence of preteen ice hockey to warm the cockles of your heart, especially when you consider how goddamned unlikely the titular team's ultimate victory against the clearly superior Hawks really is.
When we first meet the team, they're an absolute mess; a rowdy, uncontrollable rabble of tiny humans that can barely stand upright on ice skates, and yet, somehow, within the span of coach Gordon Bombay's mandated community service hours, they become a pee-wee championship-winning machine ready to launch their own progressively disappointing trilogy. Remember, this is a team whose ultimate secret weapon is poaching other people's players and skating in a giant V.
This is a team who found their enforcer literally just hanging out in an alleyway as they were about to be beaten up by opposition players, because people take pee-wee hockey way too fucking seriously for comfort. This is a team coached by a sometimes-sober lawyer who is at least ambivalent about anyone under the age of 18 or anything that isn't where and when he can get his next drink.
And they won anyway. It was magical. It was momentous. Queen's on the soundtrack. You could chalk that up to Disney feel-goodery if you want, but the following year's Cool Runnings ought to prove that the company has absolutely no qualms about lulling your optimism about guaranteed happy endings into a false sense of security and then skull-fucking it into a fine powder.
normans d. sicilians, 1063
Thanks to Zack Snyder and Gerard Butler's shining abs, we all know the story of the 300 Spartan warriors who bravely fought a last-stand battle against a significantly larger Persian force so long ago that neither of those places exist any more. What you mightn't know is, far more recently, an even smaller force held off an even larger enemy, and they actually did it successfully.
The Battle Of Cerami, in 1063, was part of the larger Norman conquest of Sicily that spanned more than three decades, from 1060-1091. Under the leadership of Roger de Hauteville, a small expeditionary force numbering 136 knights and a handful of infantry clashed with the far larger combined forces of Sicily and Ifriqiya (Tunisia/parts of Libya and Algeria), with some estimates putting the number of opponents at anywhere between 15,000 and 50,000.
"C'mere, I want to axe you a question! Ha, ha! Still not old."
Of course, despite their laughably small complement, you could still argue that the Normans weren't really the underdogs here — they were, after all, trained soldiers with their eye on the ball and a united goal of conquering the shit out of Sicily. The Muslim alliance, as the opposing force is collectively known, was a more fractured entity, with several of its men being little more than everyday people caught up in the madness of trying to prevent the encroachment of the northern invading army. Indeed, in the wider context of the entire conquest, it's hard to feel like the Normans were in the worse position of the two sides.
Except… 150 people vs. (at lowest) 15,000. Victorious. That is a ridiculous feat on its own merit, regardless of the larger, manpower-heavy campaign that was happening around it (and which was responsible for leaving Roger with less than a village's worth of people to launch his assault in the first place). Where's that movie?
guy who learnt karate yesterday d. established karate expert, 1984
Speaking of movies, The Karate Kid is arguably one of the greatest underdog stories of all time, not for its messages of discipline, self-control and taking the high road, but because its main character manages to win a karate tournament against a seasoned martial artist after picking up karate, like, the week prior through the prodigious teachings of his building's handyman.
The ultimate triumph of The Karate Kid is especially potent as it becomes clear that protagonist Daniel is not actually fighting his succession of opponents from the nefarious Cobra Kai dojo, but its insane leader, an ex-Special Forces veteran who seems to really enjoy ordering children to physically hurt other children. Pretty much every time Sensei Nutjob instructs one of his kids to fuck Daniel's shit right up, they do so, but it's after some obvious reluctance. They're just blindly following orders, not because they're really evil, but because they're kids. Still, though, the fact that Daniel is able to rebound at all to face alpha-douche Johnny Lawrence in the final is nothing short of a miracle.
"Up, up, down, down, left, right, left, right, B, A, Star- wait, that's not it."
Imagine, at your high-school cross-country tournament, if one of the parents of your sprinting rival or whatever it is that runners have was consistently trying to harm you vicariously through the misguided actions of other students. Malicious child puppeteering mightn't be a crime, but it's — wait, no, I'm pretty sure it's a crime. That's basically what Daniel endures, except with serious injuries involved.
Despite the best efforts of Captain Killemall, our man makes it to the final fuelled by adrenaline and a few hours of karate training to finally topple his bully and presumably solve all his problems forever, because we all know how well bullies tend to react when they're publicly embarrassed by people they've been beating black and blue for the past several years.
Hey, speaking of, remember the time the Harlem Globetrotters lost to their long-time nemeses?
new jersey reds d. harlem globetrotters, 1971
When it comes to underdogs, it's hard to look past the poor old Washington Generals. In case you're unaware, the now-defunct exhibition basketball team went by several names a month over the course of its lifetime — Boston Shamrocks, New Jersey Reds, Baltimore Rockets, Atlantic City Seagulls — but what's important is that, whatever the moniker, the Generals hold the ignominious distinction of being the group of people to get their asses handed to them the most embarrassing number of times by their antithetical repeat opponents, famed showboating 'ballers the Harlem Globetrotters.
Despite a (somewhat constructed) loss streak of a breakdown-worthy 2495 games, there had to be at least one Generals (or, on the night in question, New Jersey Reds) fan in the audience on 5 January, 1971, when the longtime rivals met for what was presumed to be a routine ass-handing in Martin, Tennessee. And, for that hypothetical fan (god, I hope they exist), that would be the greatest day they would ever know.
It's important to understand, when talking about the Globetrotters, how low the stakes really are. This is not historically a real basketball team, but, like the Generals, an exhibition team; they trade not only on athletic skill, but theatrics and comedy — their games are as much a performance as they are a sports demonstration. So, as much as the Harlem Globetrotters play up their actual basketball skill (they're actually pretty inconsistent in actual competition), the Generals played theirs down, often acting as deliberately useless opposition. It's not a total fix-up, but it's far from the sorts of legitimate tension you see on-court in your everyday NBA games (or even NBL).
But not on 5 January, 1971, the day that Generals fan in the crowd was unknowingly living for. Because that day would be the first (confirmed) time the team actually did the seemingly impossible and beat the friggin' Harlem Globetrotters. By one point (100-99), no less.
According to some commentators, it was precisely because the Globetrotters aren't actually very good basketballers that they were unable to attain their 2496th win in a row — they had apparently toned down some of their gags during the game and inadvertently drawn the Generals/Reds into a more traditional game of basketball instead. Despite some loose rule interpretation from the ref to try and swing things back to the Globetrotters' favour, they couldn't quite overcome the situation they had left themselves in at the game's conclusion, and that's how they ended up losing to a team they had literally humiliated non-stop for decades... before promptly returning to the habit of decimating the Generals forever.
