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UFC welterweight Chris “Lights Out” Lytle (30-18-5) is well known among mma fans as an exciting fighter, having won five “Fight of the Night” bonuses including three straight at one point.
The Indianapolis, Indiana born fighter is coming off a loss at UFC 127 to Brian Ebersole, earning one of those five bonuses, and does not have an opponent, but may face Dan Hardy sometime this fall. Currently, “Lights Out” has found himself involved with the Indy PAL MMA program in Indianapolis.
Lytle, along with his trainers Pat McPherson and Keith Palmer, looks to offer youth a chance to learn boxing, wrestling, and jiu-jitsu, as well as being offered academic support and mentoring, at no cost. The program has a facility but requires funds for equipment and other necessities, so they have submitted a proposal to the Pepsi “Refresh Everything” campaign in hopes of getting the money needed.
“The PAL used to do the same thing with boxing back when I was a kid and a long time before that, and now we’re just trying to move that over to MMA and provide a place where these kids don’t have to pay money to do this. You can just come in and work with the Police Athletic League and they’ll provide them with trainers. Pat’s gonna be there, I’ll come in and teach them stuff, and one of my other coaches, Keith Palmer, will teach some boxing.”
“These young kids, they’re hungry to learn and they need something like this. A lot of them, they don’t have any place to go and nothing to do, and idle time is a bad thing because you’ve got nothing to do besides get in trouble. And they like the UFC, they want to do it, but they have no avenue. Now, when you can catch people’s eyes and get them to see the positive things, like maybe seeing me on TV and then in the gym and saying ‘I want that,’ boom, we could have saved 10, 20, 50 kids who decide that this is the avenue they want to take.”
The Indy PAL MMA’s $50,000 Pepsi Refresh grant proposal is live through May 31 and supporters are encouraged to vote each day at http://www.refresheverything.com/indypalmma by voting through Facebook, logging into their Pepsi account and voting, or voting via Text.
Supporters can vote by texting 106352 to Pepsi (73774).
Original post and Lytle quotes UFC.com