Jeffrey Earnhardt descended from NASCAR royalty. As the grandson of legend Dale Earnhardt and the nephew of Dale Earnhardt, Jr., racing is literally in Jeffrey's bloodline. The he has raced and plans to race again, Earnhardt is debuting in a new sport: MMA.
Earnhardt will fight at Fight Lab 25 in Charlotte, N.C. as an amateur on Tuesday night. He will fight Chris Faison at bantamweight. Earnhardt trains at Renegade Fighting Systems in Charlotte.
Though he races on the Rolex Sports Car Series and the NASCAR Nationwide Series, he was attracted to the challenge and physical conditioning of MMA. On Tuesday night, he wants to use his fight to show that race car drivers are great athletes, too.
"A lot of people don't see race car athletes as true athletes," he said to MMA Fighting. "They don't think we're capable of doing anything other than sitting in a car and driving in a circle. A lot of people don't understand the reality of it. This is an opportunity to prove to people that race car drivers are athletes. It's a lot harder than people realize. Hopefully this MMA fight will help people realize that, and that we can hold our own as athletes."
But he's still an Earnhardt, and the 22-year-old said racing will always be number one for him. Fighting is fun, but racing cars is the family business.
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Source: http://sports.yahoo.com/blogs/mma-cagewriter/earnhardt-offspring-set-mma-debut-135416629.html
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