By Goya Dmytryshchak
If You Could See Me Now – that’s the song world champion boxer Sylvia Scharper thinks of when she enters the ring and remembers her father.
The Footscray boxer lost her dad when she was a teenager after he went into hospital to await a heart transplant and experienced complications.
“I was pretty lost for a good 10 years,” she said.
She started doing Thai boxing, which reminded her of sparring in the backyard with her father, before switching to boxing.
“It ended up being a way that I processed my grief,” Scharper said. “Maybe … it was a bit of rage gone into something productive because I felt pretty robbed.
“When you fight, you’re pretty vulnerable and your character and your strength and your self-belief all come out in that process – and it was sort of then that I realised how stuck I was.
“Dad was my No.1 fan so I kind of had to build myself up again on my own.”
Scharper, 36, has been immortalised in Relentless: The Sylvia Scharper Story, a film from Welcome Stranger Productions directed by Altona Meadows’ Aaron Ellis and produced by Taylors Lakes’ Lester Ellis jnr.
It follows their documentary about Graeme “Porky” Brooke, Stolen Glory: The Tale of Porky Brooke, which has been acquired by SBS.
In 2015, Scharper had her first shot at world title glory, but fell short to Marnelle Verano of the Philippines.
Believing Scharper was a world champion in the making, Aaron Ellis started following her with a film camera.
In March last year, she went up against Queenslander Kori Farr for the Women’s International Boxing Association world bantamweight title. The fight resulted in a draw – which Scharper described as another of the most devastating moments in her life.
Ellis had planned to stop filming after the fight, but decided a draw wasn’t a good note to end on – so he kept the camera rolling.
The week before Scharper had another attempt at the world title, Ellis showed her footage of the draw to jog her memory.
“I saw how emotional I was and I think it made a big difference in how I came out to that fight because I remembered that grief – I was devastated,” Scharper said. “I think it really pushed me, reminded me.”
Last December, Scharper beat Thailand’s Rungnapha Kaewkrachang to become WIBA’s super-flyweight world champion.
“I bawled like a baby when I won because it was the culmination of 10 years of work,” Scharper said. “I’m only competing against myself so it’s mental warfare over myself.
“I always feel like my dad’s with me. I think if he saw the determination with which I’ve applied myself to something that I probably wasn’t that suited to, he would be really proud of me … I think of him every fight.”
Relentless: The Sylvia Scharper Story will premier on Wednesday, November 28, at Yarraville’s Sun Theatre.
