Fight Gone Bad (the fundraising event) was born one hot day at Crossfit LA after I’d just finished Fight Gone Bad (the Pukie Award Winning workout) with Andy Petranek. I’d been either developing programs, or fundraising through sports for programs, for 20 years. I’d just taken on the job of developing a new model for sports fundraising by the Prostate Cancer Foundation.

As Andy and I regained our color and compared scores, it seemed like the most natural event in the world to put together. The community was populated by people who could relate to pain and suffering, and we both knew even back then that Crossfitters would go all out at anything they did.

The rest as they say, is history. Four months later, Fight Gone Bad had raised more than $120,000 with only 59 affiliates competing. More important than the money was the opportunity that the event provided for people to touch the lives of more than 2 million American families dealing with prostate cancer. A fact that only becomes apparent after you’ve done an event like this is how isolated and underserved the cancer community is in general, and the prostate cancer community specifically

That first year, it was hard to tell who was more touched by the overwhelming support of the community, the hundreds of thousands of people who felt a little less alone and forgotten that day, or the Crossfitters who found a way to reach them by giving everything they had for 17 minutes.

The event came to mean so much to so many that last year we were able to incorporate a second beneficiary, the Wounded Warrior Project. What better group to support than the one that day in, day out strives to fill the gaps in services our returning soldiers must face?

From that first inspiration to this day, Fight Gone Bad has been the fight gone better for thousands of Americans who were looking for help and found it in our little corner of the world. I hope you’ll join in this year to reach our goal of raising more than $1million.

Sincerely,

Scott Zagarino