DUNMORE, Pa. -- An amateur boxer from Lackawanna County scored the gig of a lifetime, but it won't take place in a boxing ring, but rather on your TV screens during the Super Bowl.
Shawn McFadden is getting ready for his TV debut on Sunday, but his dream was already fulfilled when he got to meet Sylvester Stallone. For years, McFadden has identified with Stallone's role as an underdog, both on-screen and off.
If you asked the kids at Dunmore Elementary who they're rooting for on Super Bowl Sunday, they'd say their custodian and amateur boxer from Madison Township Shawn McFadden.
The reason they're swarming him like crazed football fans, doling out high fives and hugs, is that McFadden has already won. He won the chance to not only meet his childhood icon Sylvester Stallone, but to share the small screen with him in a Super Bowl commercial.
"I got to have a five-minute personal conversation with him and share my story with him that I've been rehearsing since I was 10 years old," McFadden said.
The ad is Facebook's first Super Bowl spot and will also feature Chris Rock.
The social media platform called on a Rocky Balboa Facebook fan group, of which McFadden is a member, to submit 30-second videos explaining why they should be picked to be extras in the ad.
"I wasn't going to do it, I never thought I'd get chosen, so I was on my way home on the deadline, and within two hours, they called me and said, 'We're taking your video right to the boss."
McFadden's connection to Stallone is a compelling one. As boys, both went to the same school for troubled youth near Philadelphia. Although it was more than 20 years apart, they shared the same therapist.
"When you're 10 years old and you go into a place like that, you have two choices. You either fight back, or you can choose to go the other way," McFadden said.
Stalone's success served as McFadden's inspiration.
"When I got out of there, I moved up here within a year, from Philly, and I had my first fight at the CYC in front of 3,000 people."
And Stallone lived up to McFadden's expectations when they shot the commercial in Philadelphia, of course, by the Art Museum steps made famous by Rocky.
"Every time we got a break or something like that, instead of him being with the producers and the directors, he came down into the crowd, with his cell phone, holding it up, 'Who wants selfies? Who wants selfies?'"
But back at Dunmore elementary, it's McFadden who is the star.
He wasn't allowed to tell us too much about the commercial. He said the shoot took 10 hours but that he would've stood there in the cold for 20 hours.
When the ad runs in the fourth quarter on Sunday, McFadden says he'll be pinching himself the whole time.