What inspired you to reach out to the Denver Children’s Hospital?
It was brought to us by Fight Ribbon and when we heard what they were trying to do, we were instantly in. To be able to go and spend some time with the kids is something I thought was the best thing we could do. I know the heartache that those kids go through and the day-to-day fight is a rough one. Man, it was just a great opportunity.
Could you tell me about your experience?
It was great in a way and it was horrible in a way. We had a fighter who had to leave after about 10 minutes of being there—he just couldn’t take it. You see kids with cancer, who are in there missing limbs, and kids that are in there that are living day-to-day, not month-to-month. To be able to go and witness that is a hard, hard thing to go through and the fighters that went there and had the opportunity to be a part of that—I commend them, I tip my hat to them. Everybody that joined in—even the guys that couldn’t make it—it’s such an honour to have fighters that would give up their day-to-day life to go give these kids attention. It was a heart-wrenching day, but it was so, so worth it.
Was there any part of your experience that left a particularly lasting impression on you?
The part that sticks with me is the gratitude and the thankfulness that the kids gave back. There wasn’t a room that we went in where we didn’t get a smile—some of the kids that we saw weren’t able to communicate with us—and the smile and the looking-in-the-eyes was just key—as you leave the room you could almost feel the enlightenment that you gave them that day. I’m telling you, that was probably the biggest thing that I remembered. It wasn’t just the kids—it was the families, too. There were a few parents that we got to meet and just how excited they were to have their kids have someone visit them, because they’re in a room—they can’t leave the hospital. It wasn’t that we are fighters—there were a couple kids that knew Brendan from the videogames—but it wasn’t that, it was just, "Hey, man—someone came to see me." That’s what sticks with me and I’ll think about that every day. We think we have it hard, but we don’t have it hard at all—what I mean by “we” is me and my team.