Childhood cancer awareness boxing, kickboxing and MMA event set for Saturday in Havre

KillEagle Promotions will be holding Brawl at the Mall, a boxing, kickboxing and mixed martial arts event at the Holiday Village Mall Saturday at 7 p.m., as an awareness-raising event for childhood cancer.

The event will feature 10 fights including four amateur MMA bouts, one amateur boxing match and a heavy-weight kickboxing match, as well as a 145-pound fight, the later two of which will be for the promotion’s first titles.

Wesley KillEagle, the primary organizer, said the event will have professional bare-knuckle boxing and a heavy-weight bare-knuckle MMA fight as the main event, something he said his promotion is the first to do in Montana.

Part of the proceeds for this event will go to the Seattle Children’s Cancer Research Center.

KillEagle said his promotion has been holding awareness events like this for a few years now, but they are looking to build up more of a budget so they can expand their operation, and do more events to help bring awareness to childhood cancer, an issue that struck his family years ago.

Five years ago this week KillEagle’s then 7-month-old daughter Payton was diagnosed with liver cancer, and they had to fly out to the Seattle for surgery.

He said on top of the frightening diagnosis he was not in a good position to pay for the treatment his daughter needed, putting him in a really tough situation.

“I just remember how scared I was,” he said. “ ... I was a single father at the time, I had two kids at home, I’d just bought a house, I’d just bought a vehicle and I was struggling and freaking out, trying to figure out how I was going to pay for everything.”

He said he was willing to sell everything if he had to to keep his daughter alive, but thankfully he didn’t have to, since he lived in a great area of Montana.

KillEagle said people from Hill, Blaine, Valley and Phillips counties pitched in and he didn’t have to worry about the medical bills.

He said the surgery was successful and Payton has been in remission since. She has to be on the lookout for colon cancer which she’s at increased risk for, and has suffered some permanent hearing loss, but she’s healthy, he said.

“We’re learning sign language just in case,” KillEagle said.

He said he doesn’t want other parents to go into this situation blind like he did, so he’s been working to raise awareness ever since, and he’s ultimately just following the lead of the people who helped him out five years ago.

He said his promotion has put on fights before in Malta but they had to take a break in 2020 for the pandemic, with their last event being in September, childhood cancer awareness month, of last year.

KillEagle said the primary focus of his organization is raising awareness about childhood cancer but they also promote awareness about the Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women crisis, and hold free self-defense seminars for women.

He said the participants in these matches aren’t merely fighters, but warriors who fight for a cause they all believe in, including two of his daughters who will begin Saturday’s event with a kickboxing exhibition match, the first of many great fights people will see that day.

“It’s gonna be a great time,” he said.

KillEagle said the doors for the event will open at 6 p.m. with alcoholic beverages provided by Vic’s Place, along with Indian tacos and a variety of fry bread.

He also said the Hays Youth Boxing Team will be there to do some fundraising for some of their upcoming actives.

The weigh-in for the event will be at the Havre Eagles Club 6 p.m. tonight.