The Gordon / Earnhardt thread got me to thinking. I have some detailed info on Dale Jr. that very few people know.

This info comes from direct posts at mixedmartialarts.com, now MMA.tv, by those involved.

About 4 or 5 years ago Dale Earnhardt Jr. who is a huge fan of grappling based martial arts such as Jiu-Jitsu decided he wanted to sponsor a tournament. He enlisted the help of Budweiser and off they went to attempt to challenge the Arnold-Gracie Classic (yeah that Arnold and those Gracies) as this nations premier grappling event.

My understanding is that Dale insisted on being deeply involved in the handling of the event. Well...things went badly, very, very, badly. It was unorganized and poorly run to say the least. The biggest problem I saw addressed was that no trophies had ever been obtained as promised.

I saw this being addressed in detail and at some length by a good number of well known fighters and trainers focused primarily on the fact that the kids in their respective classes had never received the trophies that had been directly promised them by Dale Jr. himself at the tournament.

I saw statements from some of the baddest men on the planet saying to the effect of "I don't care about anything for myself but if my kids don't get their da&* trophies pretty soon I'm looking that skinny S*B up and twisting his head off!"

I'm not exaggerating this. In fact for about a month or a month and a half there would be 4 or 5 new posts each day from various known and respected trainers and fighters threatening VERY serious bodily injury to young Mr. Earnhardt.

Repeated attempts to contact Jr. were made and a number said that they did make contact but to no avail. Finally a Brazilian grappling coach who had served as an advisor at the event took it upon himself to purchase the trophies and send them out.

Budweiser took away any control that Jr. had over the event, removed his name from it and has turned it into the Number 2 event of it's sort in the country. Dale isn't even mentioned there now. In fact I've heard that several were hoping he would show so they could "have a word with him".He has yet to do so.