Allan Cayenne is ‘fired up’ to be part of the burning Champions for Charity legacy
By Jeff Hicks
KITCHENER —
Mandy Bujold swung the wooden mallet like a two-time Olympian looking for a knockout.
Her boxing coach, Syd Vanderpool, held the spigot tight to the Oktoberfest keg as Bavarian beer flew through the Carl Zehr Square air as Mandy’s hammer-punch landed.
Behind them both, well back of the keg-tapping splash zone, stood Allan Cayenne.
The KW Oktoberfest president and local real estate agent, dry and smiling, stayed away from the suds-soaked property in front of his aproned guests-of-honour.
Three months later, as one of Bujold’s 20 Champions for Charity, Cayenne is damp with cold January sweat, not chilled hops from the kickoff keg for an early-fall festival.
He joins 19 other community business leaders and big-hearted professionals in training for their first charity boxing match — The Brawl at Tapestry Hall on April 4.
Their goal? To raise $500,000 for McMaster Children’s Hospital Foundation in the third Champions for Charity event. The three-event total aims to top $1-million.
How did Cayenne get signed up for this? Easy. One good tap deserves another.
Mandy and Syd, now his Red Team Champions coach, tapped the Oktoberfest keg.
Mandy tapped Cayenne to get socked in the face for Champions for Charity.
“Mandy looked at me afterwards and said, ‘Now, you’ve got to try out for my event, Champions for Charity.’ That really got me intrigued,” said Waterloo’s Cayenne, a 41-year-old former rugby player and students union president at Wilfrid Laurier University.
“This is something I needed to throw my hat in the ring for.”
Soon, Cayenne’s metaphorical chapeau will be replaced with real-world headgear for the Middle Earth aficionado who aims to be the Lord of the Ring in Cambridge.
Perhaps the sweet-toothed Cayenne will enter the ring on April 4 chomping on the Yorkie chocolate chunks and sugar-dusted fruit pastilles his Scottish mom Isobel gave him as a Yuletide gift. Maybe he’ll show up that night wearing the boxing-gloves tie his sister Michelle got him for Christmas.
A tie to die for? Not likely.
After all, the lead character in Cayenne’s favourite Timothy Finley book, Pilgrim, was incapable of dying. But he could get smacked in the face, something Cayenne is willing to endure for the community he loves and a cause he appreciates.
So many of his friends have had little ones helped by McMaster Children’s Hospital. So many have wished him well when finding out he is a Champion for Charity.
“I’m fired up for this,” said Cayenne, who started his own marketing company after studying kinesiology and English at university.
“I’m an extremely competitive person and someone who cares about my community. This event is perfect for me because it really blends a lot of my passions together. It gives me an outlet to be competitive and it gives me a way I can give back to this community and help provide a future for the children of our community.”
If Cayenne needs motivation to get up early to train — and he does since he isn’t a morning person — he thinks of his three-year-old niece Zo.
“If something ever happened to her, I’d want her to have the best care possible. It’s just another reason I’m inspired to do this.”
The fellowship of the ring also has Cayenne, a fan of Tolkien’s unstoppable elf Legolas, in its grip. He is smitten with the camaraderie of the Red Team and the shared cause stirring all the Champions for Charity to train.
Watching the first-time boxers in last year’s event on YouTube, earned his admiration.
“They left it all out there in the ring,” Cayenne said. “Now, it’s my turn. I’ve got to maintain that legacy.”
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