BROWNING — Eight years ago, Wesley KillEagle of Dodson lived out every parent's worst nightmare.
"My daughter Payton was was diagnosed with hepatic blastoma liver cancer in January of 2017,” KillEagle said. "She was seven months old at the time when she was diagnosed.”
She had 60% of her liver removed at just 10 months old and underwent an intensive course of chemotherapy. KillEagle thought it was odd that the same treatments used for adults were used for infants. That’s when he learned a troubling statistic.
A significant disparity exists in cancer research funding. At the time, only about 3% of federal cancer research dollars went to pediatric cancers.
“So every dollar that went to cancer research, they said our babies weren't even worth three cents,” KillEagle recalled. "And to me, that was wrong.”
So he decided to do something about it. He founded KillEagle Promotions and started hosting “Fight For Our Future” mixed martial arts events across Montana in an effort to raise money and awareness for pediatric cancer.
But to KillEagle, a former fighter who recently celebrated 12 years of sobriety, the mission encompasses much more.
“When we say ‘fight for our future’, that means a lot of things. Bringing awareness and raising money for childhood cancer is one part. But it also means, drug, alcohol and suicide prevention,” KillEagle said. "On our reservations, we have a lot of those problems along with MMIP and MMIW. We found MMA worked as an outlet for a lot of kids, an avenue to turn away from drugs, alcohol and give them another option besides suicide.”
And on Saturday, April 26, KillEagle Promotions will hold the Beat Down in Brown Town at the 'Glacier Dome' in Browning. It’s the first-ever sanctioned MMA event on the Blackfeet Reservation, featuring a card full of Montanan and Native American fighters.
"Browning is going to be a beautiful place to come support a good cause and some great warriors,” KillEagle said. "And we call them warriors because they fight for the cause. They don't fight for themselves. They actually fight for what they believe in. They believe in this cause, childhood cancer awareness.”
The main event features Brandon “The Viper” Hegsted of Kalispell taking on Daniel “Eagle Boy” Augare from Browning, billed as West Glacier vs. East Glacier.
Seven years and 11 events into this journey, Payton is thriving. She hands out championship belts and poses for pictures with the fighters. And while pediatric cancer research still has a long ways to go, there are positives.
“So childhood cancer research was under 3% since we started in this in 2018. We're now at 4%. So we are going in the right direction,” KillEagle said. "We just need more people to realize that babies do get cancer. Because when she got cancer, that's first question I said was, how can she have cancer? She's just a baby. We need to start taking care better care for our kids”
