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December 13, 2023 10:00 pm ET
Brandon Royval sat tearful at a UFC post-fight news conference in 2020. He was happy with the win, sure – but the performance bonus? That was life-changing.
Headlines centered around Royval being able to quit his day job at a juvenile detention center. MMA could be his full-time gig. Little did Royval know, the next step of his dream would also leave a bit of a void.
“I kind of just wanted to get back into that situation and dive in where I can,” Royval recently told MMA Junkie. “It turned into me trying to go back to the juvey and work as a volunteer. Then, things kind of get hard from there (and I found out) the best way to get involved is to get into the prevention side of things. It turned into, ‘How do I go and get there before the kids are actually in trouble and in gangs?’”
Each Wednesday, Royval dedicates his time to mentoring and assisting at-risk and unprivileged middle and high school kids at the Denver Dream Center, a group founded in 2014 in an effort to “bring wrap-around services, pro-social events, and crisis intervention services to share love and effective support with those who need it most.”
Royval, 31, will show up to the center and play games with the kids, or maybe just talk. But his presence is felt – as are the kids’, to him. The community continues to grow, as has Royval’s admiration for its programs.
“The untapped potential in a lot of people is crazy,” Royval said. “I feel like if you can spark that in anybody, it’ll lead to a better world. … Years of working in the ‘juvey,’ you see some kids who have some great leadership qualities. They’re super intelligent. They’re picking up on things super quickly, but the resources around them aren’t there.
“… If we bridge that gap in the future, it’s going to make the biggest difference in our world. It’s going to lessen how many people enter the corrections system, how many people are being successful on a daily basis, or just in life. If you can tap into that and make those things happen, I feel like you can change the world for the better.”
Saturday at UFC 296 at T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas, Royval steps into the biggest fight of his life. A watch party full of kids and adults from the Denver Dream Center will be watching closely.
Royval remembers the impact and joy felt by the kids when he used to bring the LFA flyweight title. The leverage he had to create a competition prize was uncanny. Being able to bring the UFC belt by would raise things to a whole new level.
“I used to let whoever was hitting the hardest or the fastest or whoever is doing the best,