"In an outward sense, I have nothing to show." "I have nothing to show, but what I've been doing is building a foundation." "Now I can build, you know, my life." "I can build a great work... you know, a great work of art with my life." "You know, something with meaning, something that stands for something." "I see this higher purpose for my life." "I just..." "I had a sense of things." "I had a sense of the flow of my life, the kinds of things that would happen." "Not exactly what would..." "what would happen." "I don't know, I always saw fighting as a... just a stepping stone to something to build me into the kind of man that's gonna be able to accomplish... accomplish this... what I'm supposed to accomplish later in life." "The greatest... the greatest thing is coming up later." "It's not yet." "Hello, everyone around the world." "Once again this is Eddie Goldman on what is a very sad edition of no holds barred because we're doing a tribute to the late Evan Tanner." "And in breaking MMA news former UFC champion Mr. Evan Tanner was found dead in the deserts of California." "The 37-year-old former UFC fighter died in the desert east of San Diego." "Police say, after days of searching... preliminary reports are heat exhaustion, according to the autopsy." "He was a puzzle to many, even those closest to him." "And there is still a puzzle about the way that Evan Tanner passed." "The motherfucking idiot go out there without a parachute, writing a fucking article for you, and people that have sat in a sauna and have spent time in a sauna cutting weight know what it feels like." "It's the worst fucking feeling in the world when your body goes into dehydration and your muscles cramp." "They pour so much emotion into Evan Tanner's death." "It was like, you didn't know that fucking guy." "You know?" "He wrote for you." "He wrote for you." "All these motherfucking fans of his, all these motherfucking bloggers..." "Fuck." "Um..." "God, that's the fucking worst way to die, man." "He died..." "Yeah." "That's how." "What are you gauging when you talk to people?" "I mean, was it..." "I hate to use the word, but, I mean, might as well talk about it." "It's like the elephant in the room." "Was it a suicide mission?" "Was he going out there to die?" "It bums me out that... you know, that I don't know what happened or... 'cause that ain't like Evan." "I don't belong to this world or anyone." "I mean, just... for he to just..." "just to live my journey." "I don't belong here." "I can feel like just my body gonna stay, but my soul wants to get out of here." "Who knows what really happens?" "You know, if he just, like, got tired of his life, you know, jump on the motorcycle, no gas, no battery, no money, no water." "Like, the guy's..." "the guy's not a dumb guy." "You know, he's a pretty smart guy." "And it just..." "it wasn't a smart guy way to go." "As far as intentionally going out to the desert underprepared," "I think it was just another challenge for him." "Preparing was not his best, I guess, because he just liked to go." "I knew him so well, but... but I, you know, lost touch with him for so long that it was like... it just... it seemed... seemed crazy." "It was wicked." "He used to go out into the wilderness all the time by himself and, you know, go out there and get his head together." "He liked to be out there." "And so I don't think anybody really thought it was that big of a deal at first." "And then after time started to go, and then they found out that he had passed." "Was he going out there to test his body?" "Was he going out there to, like, he had said, you know, man versus the wild, and, you know, see who was gonna win?" "And, you know, I don't know if he had intentions of coming back or not." "I mean, that's the big speculation." "No one will ever know but him." "He had been writing a blog for several months since his return to fighting after a layoff, and a lot of what he wrote turned out to be eerily prophetic, as we take a look now at some of the samples from Evan Tanner's blog." "♪ Way out on the windswept desert ♪" "♪ where nature favors no man ♪" "♪ a buffalo found his brother ♪" "♪ at rest on the sun-baked sand ♪" "♪ now the buffalo said ♪" "♪ to his brother ♪" "♪ what sickness got you this way?" "♪" "♪ but his brother never said ♪" "♪ 'cause his brother had been dead ♪" "♪ been dead since way last may ♪" "♪ way out in the windswept desert ♪" "♪ I heard a big Indian moan ♪" "♪ I left my tent ♪" "♪ for I knew what it meant ♪" "♪ and I swear I'd never more roam ♪" "♪ it was early in the morning ♪" "♪ and my eyes started turning ♪" "♪ and my legs were tired and sore ♪" "♪ I lost 50 pound ♪" "♪ on the hot desert ground ♪" "♪ and I'd lose that many more ♪" "We were all singing this in unison right as my brother was packing his bags to go into the desert." "There was a time when... when Evan was missing." "He didn't like... we didn't think he was kidnapped or ran away." "He just went, like, on an adventure, went exploring." "And we just thought that he was gone in... you know, in the backyard playing in the tree house or something like that." "And then I guess a neighbor had called us, saying, "we found Evan by himself in the next county."" "He's in another zip code and just, like, this ten-year-old off exploring." "Evan Tanner, of course, was known as the UFC champ that he was." "He was a man that just took to this sport, starting back in his sophomore days down in high school in Texas." "He got into wrestling and within a year was already a state champion." "A lot of people called him the king of Caprock 'cause Caprock was his high school." "And a lot of people called him the king of Caprock because he was such a nice, smart, and tough individual when he left the place." "He was well-respected and well-known." "I had a computer science class the beginning of the semester, and I go, and everybody sits down, and, you know, this big guy..." "I was the kid that always liked to sit in the back of the class." "I was the littlest kid." "I had braces." "I had glasses." "You know." "So I sat in the back of the class, and this big guy sits in front of me with a buzz cut and a denim jacket, and I kept hearing the teacher say," ""Evan, Evan," and I kept looking up, going," ""is she talking about Evan Tanner?"" "And, all of a sudden, in the middle of nowhere, he turns around and says, "hi, I'm Evan." "Who are you?"" "And just starts talking to me out of the blue, and the first couple of days, I was scared to death." "I was, like, just waiting for the shoe to drop." "Just like, "okay, this guy's gonna start giving me grief."" "And it never happened." "I mean, from that point on... then I ended up joining up with wrestling that year, and he insisted I walk to practice with him." "Our high school wrestling coach was a guy named Jerome Stewart." "Coach Stewart was this bowtie-wearing," "Clark Kent-glasses guy, but, you know, he'd get you out on the mat, and he could just tear you up." "I mean, the guy was a great wrestler." "And, you know, it became a drive of Evan's to... he wanted to beat coach Stewart, you know." "And to us, you know, as kids, that was just like, "okay, whatever." "You know, good luck with that."" "High school-level wrestler, and you're talking about a guy who's an all-American." "I remember one time where coach got the best of him, which you would think that's a natural thing, you know, the guy's experience level, and I just remember Evan being in tears." "You know, his goal was to be an Olympic gold medalist." "When things didn't work out that way through college, and when he got a chance to compete, you know, in the show here that he went on to own, you know, he was kind of a natural at it." "He had that wrestling background, and, once he saw something, he picked it up." "I met him here in Amarillo, Texas." "He was running the show that he was a champion of, called the USWF." "And it was an open-handed striking company with... which you can allow kicks and knees, and I ran into Evan Tanner in 1996 after we had a couple of shows, and I tried to talk him into fighting for me," "and he was shy, he was even turning red as a young man." "And I didn't think he was interested, and a few months later, I got a call from Evan Tanner, and he was fighting for me at the beginning of 1997." "And, by the end of 1997, he became the first USWF heavyweight champion when we crowned our first champion, and he fought heath herring that night." "There he is." "Down in round six of this world championship match..." "Heavyweight champion of the world, Evan Tanner." "I was in a tournament, and he fought, like, one fight later that night." "Probably one of the best training partners" "I had in mixed martial arts for the next year." "There every day, on time, always learning, always ready to go, always showed up." "You know, never an excuse." "Never a problem." "Always, no matter what." "He was doing what he had going on, but, when he was gone, he was gone." "After USWF 16, I decided that I didn't want to promote anymore, and Evan was doing some odd jobs... laying cable and doing some different things, and I got a call from him, and Evan asked," ""what do you think about me promoting the USWF?"" "So Steve ended up selling it over to Evan." "Well, Evan, you know, still wanted to compete, but he was also intrigued by the promoting and thought it would be a good way he could make a living." "When you're supposed to be getting ready to fight the main event, you're out making sure that everything's going right in the crowd, you could even be breaking up a fight in the crowd, you could... you're handling everything, you're handling the police," "you're handling the ticket sales." "Everything that goes on is your responsibility." "He did everything." "He was so stubborn that he wouldn't hire a matchmaker." "You know, he did pretty much most of the sponsorships with his fiancée at the time." "I believe I was the one constant thing in his life that he could rely on that wasn't changing day to day." "So I think he kind of leaned on me a little bit to be his wall, his support." "You know, I remember, you know, he was fighting heavyweight at the time, and Evan, you know, I don't think he ever walked around or weighed over 205 pounds." "But he's fighting heavyweights." "You know, while guys are in the back getting ready, you know, he's working." "When it was time to come out and fight, well, it's time to come out and fight." "Drops what he does, goes in there, fights, wins." "Afterwards, he's walking around still in his trunks, you know, no shirt on, collecting money from vendors and, you know, sponsors that came in." "Guy did it all." "If Evan Tanner wanted to make a lot of money and acquire a lot of material things, Evan Tanner was smart." "He could have been a lawyer or a doctor or do anything he wanted to be..." "a college Professor." "But Evan Tanner chose to be a fighter." "Bas, you know Evan well?" "Yeah." "I... you know, I was fighting with him in Japan." "He was at Pancrase." "And that's where I met him." "He was actually the only guy who out-drank me..." "Sorry." "And, after a party..." "after a fight, we all went celebrating, and we came home at 7:00 at night... in the morning actually, and we went to sleep." "9:00 in the morning we had to go to a special press conference or something, and, when I woke up, everybody was trashed, but Evan was standing there with his beer." "He says, "Bas, do you want one?"" "I say, "okay, you beat me right now."" "That story every time came up we would meet each other." "And I remember saying to him, I said, "you got to take it easy."" "I said, "you can be the UFC champion, but it's not gonna happen overnight."" "He said, "when can I go to Japan?"" "I said, "well, we're gonna have to find out." "Let me keep working on it."" "Japanese reporters, they were coming to the USWF fights." "They saw Evan Tanner." "So I used my connection with the reporters to talk to Pancrase." "And Pancrase, for people who don't know that, was the leading mixed martial arts organization in Japan." "The rules that they had in Japan were kind of adapted kind of for the Japanese guys, with open-hand strikes, so no gloves." "That was good for the submissions." "They wanted you to wear shoes and shin protection." "Their main strengths from the Japanese has always been the ground." "And they're really good with leg locks." "Having shoes, you know, shin protection, takes the power away from the kicks." "Very good for their leg locks." "It was all adapted." "Well, finally Pancrase gave us a call and said," ""we would like to have Evan come over here" ""and stay for three weeks, and we'd like to enter him in the Neo-blood tournament,"" "which is a tournament they have for new guys coming into Pancrase." "A lot of times, the Japanese would bring guys in that kind of had a kind of tough guy reputation but just to break 'em." "I was a little worried about his match against I believe it was agi... his real name is Yanagisawa Ryushi." "He was a real tough guy." "Fight!" "First day, I told Evan, "we're all gonna go into Yokohama" ""and, you know, go see a movie and hang out." "You want to come?"" "He's like, "no, I'm just gonna jump on a train and go."" "And I ain't kidding you, man." "This guy put on his backpack and jumped on another train, and we didn't see him anywhere." "And the next thing you know, we're showing up to training, and we're, like, all freaked out." "And there he is." "At the Dojo, which is also a very difficult place to find, you know, training." "He ended up going all over Japan in one week's time." "In certain aspects of Evan's life," "I think that there was a tremendous amount of fear of things, but I think in certain aspects, like being adventurous in the world, he had no fear whatsoever." "I just want to thank everyone." "I've really enjoyed my stay here in Japan." "I feel very fortunate that I got a chance to come over here and fight in Pancrase." "Looking forward to coming back in September." "I hope to see you then." "When you win, they encourage you really to be flamboyant about your win." "They want you..." "it wasn't a disrespectful thing." "It was, you know, if you won, they wanted you to be, "aahh!"" "He wouldn't do it." "He'd just kind of get out of the ring, you know, get his hand raised, and..." "I'd go, "hey, dude, you need to sell yourself there."" "He'd like, "all right, I'll do it next time."" "Next time he wouldn't do it." "Evan Tanner had a contract already faxed to me that they wanted him to fight in three months the king of Pancrase Semmy Schilt." "And we agreed to fight him." "And at the same time ultimate fighting," "John Peretti had offered him a fight if he were to fought..." "him and Wanderlei Silva fought, the winner would fight Frank shamrock for the title." "Well, Evan and I are sitting by the swimming pool, and we're just out there alone, and all of a sudden he sits up, and he says, "I need you to do something for me,"" "and I said, "what?" And he said," ""I need you to cancel those fights for me."" "I said, "you mean your Pancrase world championship fight" ""and your opportunity to fight Wanderlei Silva "and Frank shamrock?" "You want me to cancel this?"" "And Evan said, "yes."" "He said, "I don't feel "like I have the fire in me that I need to beat these guys right now."" "He said, "maybe later," he said, "but for right now," "I want to stop fighting for a little while."" "You know, that was a real shock to me, but that was typical Evan Tanner." "In some ways, Evan didn't..." "he didn't like fighting." "I mean, there was one point where... where he was talking about going back and going back to work for att, stringing cable, which was amazing, 'cause he was very talented." "I mean, he would be the first one to tell you he wasn't a fighter." "He told me when we first met, he's like, "I'm not a fighter, man." ""It's just something that I do." "It's just something I got into."" "Man, I never bought that for one minute." "Okay?" "You know, if Evan Tanner wasn't a fighter, there isn't a fighter." "Okay?" "There's never been a fighter if Evan wasn't a fighter." "That... that was part of his confliction." "He felt there was a stigma attached to being a fighter." "And I don't know what it is." "I think he liked to fancy himself more as an intellect and a philosopher, and, you know, just the fact that, I guess, if you are a fighter, there's all these stereotypes out there of what a fighter is." "He comes into the UFC, becomes one of the best fighters in the world in his weight division, you know, a world champion." "What would Evan's life have been like without fighting?" "Who would Evan Tanner have been if there was no fighting?" "One of the funniest things was when he told me that he wanted to be a monk, and I said, "Evan,"" "he was the USWF world champion, I said," ""you are not gonna leave and go be a monk."" "I said, "you are the USWF world champion."" "I said, "you're gonna be the toughest monk "in the entire planet." "So how can you be a monk?"" "I said, "that is not for you right now." ""Go be a monk later " when you're not the USWF world champion," ""because right now I need you, and I don't want you to go anywhere."" "I'm in his guard, he's on bottom," "I feel him getting up, and I'm thinking, "oh, man, he's trying to get up." ""He's gonna kill me once he gets up 'cause I can't do anything right now."" "And it was so funny, that little voice in the back of your head," "I heard it give me a warning, and I hear... it just told me, "run!"" "So I'm in this cage, this 30-foot-diameter cage in the UFC, and Evan Tanner's getting up from the bottom, and the only thing in my mind is," ""I need to start running," so I get up, and I start running, and he catches me." "Evan didn't fight because he liked to hurt people." "He didn't fight because, you know, he was angry." "Evan fought for competition." "Evan fought because he actually enjoyed seeing if he could impose his will on somebody else that was trying to impose their will on him." "I remember watching the fight, Evan was..." "I can't remember what fight it was, but he was mounted on top of a guy, and this was before I fought in the UFC." "And he was hitting the guy, hit him a couple times, and then it was almost like as if he slowed down a little bit, and then the referee stopped him, and he just kind of put his hands up like," ""yeah, I'm done," you know, and maybe, like, stuck his hand out, like, you know, "are you okay?"" "Like, almost double-checking on his opponent to make sure that... that he was okay." "I think that there was just some genuine care on his side of things for another individual." "Well, I spent 17 years in a pro fight career, you know." "My success was at the loss of somebody else." "Well, I think, the one thing that I think Evan was looking at is," ""how do you make it win-win?"" "We would discuss the 100 monkey theory." "There is islands off Japan where there's these little monkeys." "And the monkeys are all the same breed, but they live on these different islands, right?" "So there's no communication with them." "And they all eat this root." "They dig this root up, and they eat it." "And the scientists were following these monkeys, and they noticed that this one baby female monkey started taking the root to the water, washing it off before eat it, wouldn't eat it with the dirt on it." "Some other monkeys in her tribe started doing it." "After a certain point, there was a tipping point, they call it the 100th monkey, they don't really know if it was 100 monkeys that did it, but they said that, this tribe, all the monkeys started washing the root." "They never did it before." "100 monkey theory was a big conversation with him, and I believe it." "I believe that he thought that the power of one could influence enough people that hits a tipping point, that everybody does it." "Becoming a champion, being a well-known fighter was a way for his word to get out, you know, to teach people to help people." "If he had the belt around his waist, people would listen to him, people would be paying attention to him." "And it was a platform from which he could speak." ""Everything's been about the journey." ""I never really set out goals "for fighting." ""This has been about the adventure "along the way." ""When you're on your death bed, it's those stories," ""those little adventures, that are going to be" ""the things that you remember." ""It's not so much getting there but how you got there."" "Evan called me up in Oregon and said he was, you know, interested in changing his training and taking it to a different place." "He didn't really have a team." "He didn't have a good training environment." "Everything he'd learned he said he'd learned from books." "He didn't just come out and train." "He just moved out here, kind of rolled into town one day in... he had a little pickup." "He said he didn't have a place to stay." "And he bounced around a couple people's houses, and then he said he was gonna stay here, so I think we put a camper out in back of the gym." "He stayed at my house for a few weeks, but he just really was not comfortable staying at somebody else's." "He felt like a burden and just... just could not relax." "Kept to himself." "And he was reading all the time." "I'd be like, "dude, what are you reading?"" ""Moby Dick." He had this book club that he was in that sent these leather-bound, kind of gold-trimmed books to him, you know, every month." "And he was reading all the classics." "I mean, that's all he did." "He'd train and go to his room and read." "And it wasn't like he was a big problem, but he just didn't feel comfortable in being in somebody else's space." "Just thought I would point to the piece of real estate that used to be occupied by Evan Tanner." "There's actually a trailer in the back now." "Now this is not the trailer Evan stayed in." "Just coincidentally there's a unit." "Now with this trailer in mind, that's only a couple steps down of what Evan was staying in." "Evan's did have walls on it and some type of a couch or a carpeted floor, but, you know, it wasn't..." "it wasn't what you would... you would picture a professional athlete to be staying in, let's put it that way." "And he stayed there for quite a while." "I can't remember how long, but I'd be surprised if it wasn't at least three months that that's what he called home." "When I ended up going to train at team quest, he was..." "I think he just got an apartment." "They were making fun of him, the guys there, because, before that, he lived in a... in a van or something." "They called him..." "in a sort of van in the back, and they called him the camel 'cause he didn't need nothing, no water, no nothing." "He was just kind of a, you know, tough guy, a loner-type guy, and he just slept... slept in the van." "I said, you know, "fuck that, dude." "I ain't sleeping in no van."" "I slept in the gym." "We got into it one time, training." "You know, we started going... it turned into, like, a real fight." "Evan and Baroni were sparring with each other, and I could... you have a sense of the energy when there's guys sparring around you." "And all of a sudden, I felt this big step up in the energy." "You could hear the thuds and the thwacks getting louder." "And it caused me to stop and, you know, say, "hey, we're sparring." "You guys cut it out."" "'Cause they were... it was escalating, one tit for tat." "And then sure enough, you know, Evan listened, and he backed back down." "Well, Phil didn't." "And Phil caught him with a good body shot and doubled Evan over." "And, you know, it kind of culminated in a little bit of a, you know, a ruckus that Phil had kind of cheap-shotted him, in Evan's opinion." "But I think that that was something that came up again because Evan and Phil fought each other." "And to be honest, at the time, I was really confident I would beat him, so I was like, "okay, yeah, I'll take this fight." "Free money."" "I wasn't sure he would." "When I saw him at the hotel, I was definitely trying to mean-mug him and intimidate him a little bit, but, you know, he's a tough guy, and he's not gonna be intimidated by anybody, so it didn't really work." "What... whatever." "That was my M.O. At the time." "But, you know, I was confident going into the fight that I was definitely..." "definitely gonna smash him." "And, you know, it didn't work out, but wanted a rematch." "I felt like I definitely beat him." "I thought it was a bad stoppage in the fight." "I thought it was... you know, I thought I would definitely..." "I would definitely beat him, but he changed some things up." "That fight didn't go well for me either." "I think there was maybe a little false sense of security there on Phil's part." "Ultimately, I think Evan had the last laugh." "You know, it just goes to stand how good he was." "So it helps me not feel as bad losing to him twice, you know." "Again, he had talked about getting out of fighting, and we're like, "dude, how else are you gonna make "30 grand at a pop?" ""You got a bunch of financial issues." ""You're gonna lose your house." ""You know, all this stuff going on." "Why wouldn't you take another fight?"" "There's no way Evan Tanner's gonna win this fight." "There's no way Evan Tanner's gonna win this fight." "Evan's awesome." "Evan's the big underdog." "When he fought David Terrell, he had told me that he got the call" "I think it was two or three weeks' notice." "They called him out of the blue." "He was in a bar, and they offered him a world championship fight, and he was like, "yeah."" " Anyways, I think about 3:00 that morning, he calls me, and he tells me he's lost in the woods." "So I tell him, I said, "well," ""you need to tell me, you know, where you're at," ""or, you know, look around, "see if you can see something" "I can identify with, I'll come get you."" "It's like he starts looking around, and he goes," ""I see a library."" "I said, "where were you at?"" "He tells me the name of some bar." "Been walking for three hours." "You could literally take a rock and throw it from that bar to that library." "You know, he was just walking around in circles." "And it's cold." "So I pull into the library, and I don't see him, so I honk my horn, and out from this trash can comes Evan with his long..." "you know, his hair, and he's just got this mad look on his face, and so I end up putting him in the car, and I take him home." "And he told me... he was like, "well, I'm not gonna take the fight." ""I'm too, you know, I goofed off too much." "There's no way I can get in shape in time."" "I knew the ins and outs." "It was always hard to go, "oh, did he do this?" "Did he do that?" And try to run through a checklist in my head of, was he prepared?" "I kind of used some of his words against him." "I said, you know, "you always say" ""that, you know, believe in the power of one," ""believe in yourself, and, regardless of the circumstances," ""if you believe in something enough, that, you know, you can overcome it."" "'Cause I'd already bought my tickets." "And so anyways, he thinks about it, and, you know, he's like, "I'll think about it."" "Well, he's driving back to Oregon, and he's calling me in hotel rooms, says he's doing plyometrics and push ups, trying to get in shape." "He thinks he's gonna take this fight." "So Dave Terrell's a huge deal, you know, Cesar Gracie black belt, very highly touted, considered to be a phenomenon in the UFC in the middleweight division." "You know, a guy who is undefeated." "There was a ton of hype around him, and he had knocked out Matt Lindland, you know, who, at the time, people perceived as one of the top guys in that division." "Evan was probably a big underdog in that fight." "Evan trained with me at my gym at the evolution fight club." "He... he was kind of bouncing around to some boxing gyms." "Curtis Crawford was his boxing coach." "This is Tanner..." "Evan Tanner's bag." "It's called his bag because it's beat up to death, you know." "I was teaching him more of like, you know, a kind of an in-and-out style, you know what I mean, like, in and out, in and out, you know, get in and get out, get his punches in" "and get out and stuff like that." "You know, so we had to work a little different." "And so Evan had two left feet." "You know, I was trying to get his feet together." "He stumbled for a while." "You know what I mean?" "So I'm trying to get him back and forth, man, do stuff like this." "This is his rope here." "This is the same rope he used." "This is what Evan did every day." "Every day." "You know why?" "I was trying to get him to work beyond his two left feet." "Evan Tanner." "On my way for victory right here." "Tanner, how do you feel, baby?" "Beginning of the battle." "The toughest thing about Evan was his top game." "You know, once he got on top of you, you felt like he was 500 pounds, throwing elbows down at you, and you can't get him off." "Those are one of the things that I tried to have him implement in his fight, in his title fight." "He goes, "Dave Terrell was pretty dangerous."" "And I said, "you got to watch out for that guy." ""He comes out explosive." ""And so what you want to do is be careful 'cause he comes out..." "he's gonna come out wild."" "That's what I told Evan the first time." "I said, "this guy's gonna come out wild when you fight him."" "The soul assassin, David Terrell!" "I'm trying to remember what he said." "He's like, "I knew if I moved around the ring" ""and did nothing, the crowd would start booing, and it would cause him to make a mistake."" " Fighting out of Gresham, Oregon..." " Here we go." "Evan Tanner!" "He beat..." "he put it on David Terrell two minutes into the fight, just jumped on him." "You know, remember that?" "Just, Bam, was on him and just never came off and never gave the kid a second to breathe." "And Evan..." "Evan is the wrong person to have on top of you when he starts throwing bombs, and he just started elbowing and punching." "I just kept in his face, "keep hitting him." ""Keep hitting him." "He doesn't like that." "He doesn't like that." "He's hurt, he's hurt."" "And I'm just screaming, and ref jumped in and stopped it, man, and I was over the cage and picking him up." "We just kind of like, "hum."" "You know what I mean?" "Like, relaxed." "Whew." "Big pressure off his shoulder." "It was nice, you know, to have that." "The new UFC..." "And finally Evan Tanner gets his due." "And he is the middleweight champion of the world." "Ladies and gentlemen, Evan Tanner." "Yeah, it may sound crazy, but this is the part that makes me even more nervous than even stepping out in the ring, having to get up here and talk." "Got out there tonight, things went my way." "That's great." "Won the fight." "I don't even know what to say I'm so happy about that." "Definitely want to thank all the fans." "You know, it's the fans that make this... make this happen, you know, so thanks, everybody." "The celebration was like a big bang." "It was a nice, big party." "Dana white just guested for the big party on down the stairs." "And he gave big hugs, "hey, man, thanks, you know, for all the help, you know," and we just, you know, hung out like that." "He didn't really celebrate much." "When you go in and see a fighter after a fight, okay, whether they win, they're either the type that are just going crazy backstage, you know, they're so pumped up, or they lose, and they're the exact opposite." "They're so angry or depressed, and you never got either one of those emotions out of... out of him." "Evan was, in our relationship, he was very quiet." "He wasn't very emotional, I would say, as far as telling me his feelings." "We never told each other we loved each other." "For... for years, several..." "I mean, 71/2 years." "And most people would look at that and say, you know, "why?"" "And he didn't have to tell me, I guess." "I just knew." "That's just how he was." "He just didn't share his feelings or emotions with words so much." "Even after, like, he won the UFC world title, you know, I was around him, and, you know, he would say things like," ""what does that mean?" ""That doesn't mean anything." ""What does it... who cares?" ""You know, we're just a tiny, little grain of sand on a beach in this whole time."" "You know, that's how..." "that's how he thought." "He was very intelligent, and I think it was a strength, but I think that also was a weakness of his." "'Cause he... he liked to overanalyze everything." "Like, "what does it all mean?" You win the world title." "What are you doing?" "You're going, "yeah, I'm the champ."" "I mean, there is no low." "But even pretty much right after he won it, he was just like, "so what?" "What... so what?" "What does it mean?"" "Well, right there, you know something's not right." "Evan got into drinking a lot, and I think Evan always had." "You know, I think when he left Amarillo and came here in the first place, he was trying to escape that and kind of turn over a new leaf." "He just never really cared too much for Amarillo, and I think a lot of it had to do with... with him more than Amarillo because, you know, he found the same problems anywhere he went." "He just..." "I'd tell him, "you just can't blame Amarillo." ""You know, you found the same problems in Vegas and California and Oregon."" "Super hard to be an alcoholic and be the champion of MMA." "I mean, it's just a testament to how talented he was and how much further he could have gotten if he wasn't." "We were at a bar called Gaspanic, and, I don't know, I guess I was probably" "20, 30 feet from him maybe, you know." "I'm sitting there watching him, and he orders... he lines up these really big shooters of patron Tequila and about six of them." "And I thought, "oh, wow, cool, he's buying us patron shooters."" "He wasn't buying 'em for anybody but himself." "And I sat there and literally watched him drop all six patron shooters, just boom, boom, boom." "He did... actually he did all six of those, and then I saw him..." "I think he did another six maybe an hour later." "I never seen anything like it." "The amount of alcohol he put down that night was scary." "This is before the fight, and, you know, he went in there and won." "It wasn't like he seemed affected by it." "He opened up a great deal, you know." "Evan might have said... you know, ten words up to that point, you know what I mean, to me, maybe a little bit more, you know." "But that night, you know, he opened up, he was grabbing guys in headlocks, you know, goofing, he was a lot more relaxed." "You know what I mean?" "For the most part, when he was drinking, he was actually kind of the funnest to hang out with." "I don't know if that's good to say, but I don't want people to bullshit about how he is or make him out to be perfect, you know, just because he was known." "You know, I want it to be..." "I would like it to be told how he really is, without any B.S." "I told him, I said, "look, I'm your friend, and I'm not your drinking buddy, so I won't drink with you,"" "so I wouldn't drink with him no more." "I wouldn't drink beers with Evan." "And that pissed him off a little bit, but, you know, it is what it is, you know." "I've been to bars, went to get him, pull him out of bars." "He'd slap me in the face." "You know, but then he got emotional about it, you know." "You know, and that was the sad part about Evan, you know, was... he was really, really struggling." "He was really... but if you tried to put out a life preserver for him, then he was Evan, you know, Evan the warrior." ""I don't need help." "I don't need your help."" "I just told him, "listen, man, I don't think "you'll ever quit drinking." ""Maybe one day, you know, I was always afraid" ""I was gonna get that call that, you know, they found you dead" ""of alcohol poisoning or, you know, choked to death on your own vomit."" "And I said, "I'm pretty sure I'll get that call one day 'cause I don't think you'll ever quit."" "I said, "but I just don't want to get that call" ""that you killed a family of four on the way back from a movie theater."" "I said, "you know, it's not about you anymore." ""You know, your drinking's affecting other people," ""maybe directly or indirectly, " but nothing good's gonna come out of it, and I don't think you'll ever change."" "If I was to try to sum up Evan with a word, it'd be really hard, and I want to be careful too because, you know, one word that really comes to mind is "selfish."" "But I don't want to say selfish, you know, when the gentleman is passed, and it's almost like, well, I'm putting him in a negative light." "A lot of great athletes are selfish." "That's one of their top characteristics." "Evan worried about Evan." "Evan did what even wanted to do when Evan wanted to do it." "And that made it..." "that made it tough to get to know him but also to like him." "You know, selfish isn't necessarily a quality that you're looking for in a friend, though it is a good quality to have if you're gonna be an athlete that has to take care of number one." "You know, you talk about Chael and team quest, you know, it's not a team sport." "Those guys have a team, and people help you get ready for your fight, and, in turn, you're supposed to help them get ready for their fight." "Down the road, that became kind of a rub, especially, you know, after he kind of won that title and we were kind of in a negotiation for, you know, he'd owed some money," "and there were some different things hanging out there that needed to kind of be settled up and how that was gonna work, you know, with the gym and with the other guys in the gym." "I have an email actually on that." "He wrote me back, "hope your Christmas went well." ""Ours was good." "Training is going well." ""I have officially left team quest." ""Money issues..." "the issue being they thought they were entitled to a percentage of mine."" "It wasn't about any money, okay?" "Because Evan didn't care about any money, okay." "But Evan's opinion of that was, "guys, I helped literally build this gym." "I put the rafters up."" "Yeah, Evan didn't want to pay for something that he felt he helped create." "Evan had showed up to training on a few occasions liquored up, smell..." "you know, smelling like beer, and, you know, we go hard." "Instead of asking him to, you know, slow down the drinking or to, you know, curb it, it got to the point where it was just like," ""you know, here's what we expect." ""And if you don't want to do that, you know, then it's probably time for you to go."" "It wasn't what I expected." "I expected him to say, "oh, okay, you know, "I'm willing to step up and be a part of the team and contribute."" "And it was like, "yeah, you're right." "I'm pretty selfish, and I'll just go do my own thing."" "I was kind of on my own since I was... in a sense since I was in eighth grade." "You know, I had to..." "you know, I made sure" "I put myself through the rest of junior high, through high school, got myself into college." "You know, I did my own laundry." "I just had to take care of myself." "Him and his family, you know, his mom kind of checked out on him, and, from a very, very early age, they took care of themselves." "They had to." "So I think that lone wolf, kind of all-alone mentality came from that, a lot of it." "To speak to the specific timeline of Evan, when he was with Curtis and he beat Dave Terrell and won the world championship, he was still at team quest." "He was just also with Curtis." "This is not a knock on Curtis, but when he left quest and went solely in a different route and he lost the team quest aspect, he lost the championship." "So he fought Terrell, and he won." "I don't think he trained very hard for the Franklin fight, the next one, you know, 'cause then he had Franklin right out of the chute." "I remember that he dropped me in the first round." "I don't remember getting dropped at the time because, you know, Evan did have, like, one good, heavy right hand, and so, for whatever reason, I perhaps made the adjustments and whatnot, but I do remember that it just... it was like he was going back to the same thing, you know." "He was going back to the well, and the well was dry." "It just wasn't there for him anymore." "Halfway through the fight, looking at Evan's face and going, "oh, my God."" "You know, his face was all swollen up, and his eyes were swollen." "He took a pretty bad beating from rich in that fight." "He told me stories of getting hit and his whole bottom tee... like, a row of teeth getting pushed back in his mouth, and then he had to stick... push 'em back out with his tongue in that fight." "I mean, I threw a lot of punches, and it was just like..." "like, I hit..." "I felt like I hit Evan with everything but the kitchen sink, and he just would not go away." "He was determined that he was going to win that fight." "The winner of that fight would head straight to Las Vegas the next day and be the coach for season two of the ultimate fighter, which, you know, at the time, now when you look back at rich Franklin," "that really turned rich Franklin into a huge star." "So it was a big fight for both of those guys." "And going into that fight," "I honestly had no idea, you know, who would win." "That was a tough fight, but then, you know, it was a fight that rich Franklin absolutely dominated." "I asked him how he was doing, and this is what he wrote me back." ""You know, you asked how I've been." ""I couldn't honestly say that I've been well." ""I've been on the road for almost a year," ""sleeping in spare bedrooms, on couches," ""on the floor, "wherever I could." ""I've been constantly running, "searching." ""I was with a woman for seven years," ""we were engaged to be married, I came home one night," ""and there were trucks outside the house" ""and strange men loading up all her things." ""I'd sold all of my furniture " when she and I started living together," ""so when she left, she left me in an empty house." ""I couldn't sleep." "I couldn't eat." ""All I do is pace around the house" ""at night looking at the impressions in the carpet" ""where the couch sat, where the bed was placed," ""where everything used to be, " a constant reminder of what used to be." "I left that house."" "He used to love to be by himself, and he was kind of a loner." "You know, for a while there," "I remember when he first started fighting in the UFC, he had a girlfriend, a cute girl that he used to date or whatever, and she was..." "she was around for a while, and then..." "and then I never saw her again." "I think I changed who I was when I was with him." "I really..." "I don't know who he really, in his life, who was the most important to him or who he cared a lot about." "I would say, from what wade has told me, that I might have been one of the main things in his life, who he cared about, but it's hard for me to say that because I honestly never heard him tell me that," "so..." " You know, you find out the day that him and Danita split up, and you'll see a different..." "I had told him about the alcoholism, that it would need to stop." "It was really affecting us in our physical relationship, our emotional relationship, our financial relationship." "After so many years of trying to encourage him to leave that part of his life, it was really hard because it never did... it never went away." "The last time I spoke with Evan, he had invited me for lunch, and I had already moved out of the home, several weeks had gone by, and I met him." "We sat down and talked about everything, and he basically said, "if this is the decision you want, we will be over, and this is the last time we'll speak."" "And I said, "okay." "That's what I want."" "It was traumatic, you know, that he had found somebody that he wanted to treat better because she deserved to be treated so well, and he couldn't..." "he couldn't figure out how to do it until it was too late." "He, you know, went wherever Evan went." "You know, Texas or who knows where he went or any of that." "And he got a new group, you know, a group... a new corps of people around him, and he was... and he got another fight with Justin Levens." ""I accepted the fight at UFC 59." ""It gave me focus for a time, " but afterwards there was nothing." ""I fell into a deep depression, " and I traveled all over the country" ""trying to run from it." ""Some would say it was a wasted year." ""They've said that." "But, in this year, I have begun to write again."" "I was like, "oh, we should celebrate tonight," ""you know?" "You guys want to go to a club and celebrate his victory?"" "As we're leaving the parking lot of UFC." ""And then, you know, we get some drinks,"" "and he screamed loud, "no!"" "It's like, the guy just won a fight that he was all quiet about it." "And then he mentions..." "he's like, "oh,"" "like, very, very quiet, he said, "oh, we can have a drink."" "And then from there, you know, it didn't work out very well no more, but..." "Drinking his Tequila, you know, like it was Gatorade and stuff, you know." "And, at one point, he was sitting in the bench in my garage, and he was so much in alcohol for, like, three, four days that... that, you know, it was, like, blood coming out and stuff." "I never seen nothing like that." "It was sad, you know, man." "We even tried to put water in his bottles, you know." "He was like, "hey, you guys trying to trick me?"" "I was like, "can you stop drinking and stop it?"" "He would never stop." "I think those couple years of drinking were like... those 2 years were probably more like 10 or 15 years." "He put a lot of alcohol down." "It made it hard for him to keep relationships." "He was a little..." "he was a little transient." "I don't know if... you know, that's not something I can..." "I can notice." "You know, it's... you know, looking from the outside, maybe someone else could notice something like that." "I'm, like, so immersed in my own world that, you know, I can't see what different effects it might have than somebody that has a different type of life." "But, yeah, my whole life I've been traveling, you know, moving around, been a searcher and a seeker, you know, and, you know, that permeates every aspect of my life." "I mean, my..." "I mean, everything I do, you know, that kind of mindset or that state of mind, you know." "It's the underlying tone for anything I do in life." "He basically had told me, you know, growing up, that he had had a rough childhood, things like that, and he had chose to distance himself from family and friends and that life." "I think..." "I couldn't speak for how much the alcohol drove away his previous friends and stuff 'cause, like I said, by the time he got to me, he pretty much was a loner." "The last time we were together, you know, he was on my couch for three, four months, you know." "And he's cool with that." "I'm like, "yeah, you don't mind?"" ""No." You know." "And but he was drinking and, you know, had his computer, and that's how he kept in touch with the world, you know." "You know, he wasn't..." "like I said, he wasn't a talker or nothing like that, but he could write." "He could write, man." "One of the happiest I saw him was whenever he found MySpace." "You know, I think being able to use that notoriety from fighting to actually have people be interested in what he had to say, I think that's what he really liked." "Every time that Evan Tanner had a blog, it was an interesting occasion, you know?" "Always out of left field." "You never knew when he was gonna post 'em." "I still go online and..." "and talk to fans and stuff, and Evan was definitely one of the only guys that also did that." "I don't know why we both did that kind of thing." "'Cause 90% of the time, you're gonna hear, you know, not good stuff." "Maybe, I think, in the kind of detached sense that the Internet and all that created, it created some sort of safety for him, where he felt okay to kind of let..." "let a lot of that out." "And I guess what... what's bothersome is to feel like you're a friend with somebody, and you're there, and you... you want to establish a personal contact and connect with somebody, and you can never get through." "He really found an outlet of people that were reaching out and saying, "jeez, this is wonderful," and "this is great."" "And I think a lot of that was just assumed." "I think a lot of people go, "well, this guy's" ""a world champion." "I've seen him on TV." ""He's a successful guy." "If he's saying this, this must be insightful."" "And it..." "it wasn't." "It was absolute ramblings." "And if you break..." "I mean, if you've ever read a book, if you've ever gone to a course, if you've ever heard an intelligent person talk, you'd know what he was saying was not from an intelligent person." "He he had a great vocabulary." "Anybody that talked to him, you know, uh... he was just such an articulate guy, and he was such a thought-provoking conversationalist." "And, uh, I think he would have written a great book." "And so I would encourage him, I'd say, "Evan, you have a great voice."" "You know, "there's a great vision in the way you speak."" "You know... you know, "you're very visual."" "You know, "when you talk, I can see what you're" ""talking about." "That's a real talent." ""Got to develop that talent." "Use it more." "Write more, write more."" "I always found something to be very interesting about him in the way that Ernest Hemingway talks about the grindstone theory... that if you have a pen that's dulled from writing, but you've never lived your life," "then you have nothing worth writing about." "You could be the best technical writer there is, but if you have no stories to tell with your pen, there's no sense in it." "Some of it feels very poetic, like, um, almost like prose, you know?" "Some of these..." "Oh, thanks." "Yeah, then you quote..." "you quote some people, and, uh, you've got some big heroes in literature, but just the way your style of writing, it's very honest." " Thanks." " I was telling John, I'm surprised there wasn't, uh, like, Hemingway wasn't in some of your heroes because you... you have a little bit of that too." "For Evan, he..." "he did write his stories for a reason, and, um, I think he would have wanted people to know how his life was and what he learned and accomplished from that, from his writings." "I don't think most people write down everything they do, um, unless they anticipated someone wanting to know that story." "I was reading his blogs, uh, 'cause he had a public page." "So I was reading his blogs, and then I befriended him, and I sent him a message, um, briefly explaining who I was and how his blogs impacted my life and... and what I wanted to do with my life" "and how there was some similarities there." "And just, you know, just normal stuff, and then he, uh, he responded to me about a month after that." "I was in a bad spot in my life, and, uh, I was drinking a lot and doing a lot of behaviors that weren't healthy." "And I saw that he was going through the same thing, and I knew that eventually I wanted to have a fight, and, uh, so I just kind of... as he was battling something, I was dealing with it myself." "And, uh, I outlined that to him, and he got back to me and really just said, you know," ""keep pushing forward, and, if you ever need anything, feel free to drop me a line,"" "and just really sincere." "It wasn't really long or anything, but, like," "I could just tell that he really cared, and I kept in contact with him as much as I could after that when I..." "when I needed something." "Evan wrote in many journals." "He always kept a pen and paper with him, at all times." "He would, in the middle of eating, write stuff down, and he had a very big fascination with ink pens." "He had purchased a few, and it meant a lot to him." "There are, you know, many, many goals I have with the writing, you know?" "One is to market myself, keep myself out there." "Another is to be, you know, absolutely to be accessible to the fans." "You know, it's my way of giving back to the fans for, you know, everything they've done for me." "Giving them an inside look at, you know, a fighter's life, and just... just trying to be, you know, trying to... trying to share with them." "So, you know, that's another thing." "And I'm trying to get a message out there, you know, that, you know, just because you're... oh, one of the short-term messages is, you know, you don't have to be a hard-ass, a macho, tough guy, you know," "to, you know, to be a fighter, to compete in this sport, you know?" "It's... that's not what it's about." "It's not about, uh, you know, WWE and stuff, you know, that kind of disrespectful attitude." "It's about... it's about the old warrior code, you know?" "The old, you know, respect." "We're standing there, and he says," ""wade, I have something I want to give you,"" "in that... his voice, and I said, "okay, sure."" "Um, he was always humble." "He had his head bowed, and he reached up, and he says, "it's my pen."" "And I said, "okay, thanks."" "And he said, "do you know the importance of a pen?"" "And I said, "no."" "He goes, "well, someday you will."" "And it took me a while, but I was standing in the living room one day after his death, and then all of a sudden, you know, it just kind of hit me, I know I'm a little slow, but..." "Words are very powerful, and he believed that." "Words are very powerful." "He really had a huge heart, and he cared for everybody that would send him messages, and he read them, and he responded as if he did care, you know, because he did." "And I know, with a lot of the women that he... he talked to online, had a deep, deep, deep emotional connection." "I guess it depends on the person that you are and what kind of experience you had with him in what stage of his life, but to me, he was awesome." "He was like a brother to me, you know?" "He was my best friend." "Let's see, Evan and I spent weekends together for the most part because we met when I was in the school year, and, being a teacher, you know, and we'd spend time on the boat together, in oceanside." "Well, you know, Evan had been here for a long time, and he'd been way past the time limit of what they normally allowed people to hold boats here on temporary slips." "We'd only taken it out twice to learn how to sail it, and, prior to that, neither of us had had any sailing experience, so that was kind of a... it was just... it was just kind of an exciting day." "We were going out, it was sunny, the weather was good, the water was smooth." "He's just like a little kid in a candy store." "Just smiling." "He's so happy, sitting there, and he's directing the sails, and he's kind of talking to me about how you do it, and I don't know." "I'm not a quick learner." "And I was just like, "okay."" "But, yeah, he had some plans to travel around the world, around all the oceans on her." "He really thought he can do this and really would love to do it." "That was, like, his goal." "On the way down the, you know, the farther out you get the waves and the wakes get bigger." "And it was an old, wooden boat, and so we were... we were kind of hitting the wakes, and... it wasn't any big deal, but there was a couple of times where I heard big, loud cracks." "And Dan was about to come down, he noticed a bunch of water down at the end of, like, the little stairs." "There's... the water was just filling up." "And so Evan comes down, and he's, like, checking it out, trying to figure out where it's coming from." "Kind of was looking around." "He pulled the floorboards out of the boat, and it was just filled with water up to the floorboards." "He took one of those Tupperware tool... or a Tupperware container that he was using as a toolbox." "He just took it and dumped it all off onto the countertop and straddled the floorboard and just stuck it down in there and filled it up with water and handed it up to me." "We probably did that about..." "between 500 and 1,000 times." "We somehow got lucky." "We found the bay that they were talking about that we're supposed to "anchor" at." "And that's when it went down." "I just watched as Evan and Dan tried to just deal with things from the shore." "Tried to save it by just pumping water." "My friend mark had brought us some hand pumps." "We had the bilge pump connected, and Evan never stopped." "He just kept going and going and going just with the determination that he hit everything else with." "Evan didn't want to leave the boat." "You know, captain wanted to go down with the boat." "And he did." "He slept on top of it inside, because by the time it finally hit bottom, it was high tide, and it was pretty stable for the most part." "So I was gonna leave, and Evan talked me out of it." "He's like, "no, no, no." "I need you to stay here."" "I understood." "That day, losing his home and his future, his dreams of doing that, were gone." "You know, and he was still drinking quite a bit." "The sun coming up, and it was an overcast day, and by us sitting on her side, and he's sitting on the beach with all this stuff all around him." "His life that he had left, you know." "According to him, he said that was the lowest of his lows, sitting on that beach and watching that... just everything just, fttt, gone." "When I had talked to Evan about everything that he had been through and along his travels and asked him, you know, to kind of give me an idea of what that was all about, and he had touched on that, when he was drinking," "a lot of it was to gain experience and to, like, lay the foundation for a great... something that would become a great work." "And I wasn't really understanding a lot of it, and he told me to read Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse and that it would put things into perspective for me." "Most young people are broadly influenced by Siddhartha and the quest for spiritual enlightenment and the whole Buddha of it all." "Siddhartha was only a stepping stone to the conversation I had with him about Steppenwolf." "Steppenwolf was another book by Hermann Hesse that he had read that he had loved." "It's strange." "It's a story about a 50-year-old man who checks into a rooming house to commit suicide and ends up, you know, walking around an old German town where he meets a woman, and he goes to a jazz club," "and his whole life is reinvigorated by dancing lessons this woman gives him, and he opens himself up to music and a whole other life." "And Evan related to that." "I went to jazzercise class with this guy because it's an aerobic workout." "I never, ever in my life would have walked into, like..." "it was like jazzercise." "And Danita went in there too." "Me, Danita, and Evan, and I was like... and Evan knew the moves and the steps, and I'm going, "what is this?"" "I was watching him." "I'm like..." "And then he'd get kind of embarrassed that he knew 'em 'cause I'm like, "you've done this more than once." "It's not your first time."" "I think he was looking for a place to maybe get some perspective and take charge of his life again." "And, you know, we... we had heard a lot of stories about him out in town, and it was sad." "As a fan, it saddened me." "And so he came in here one day and wanted to train, so him and bill trained." "Soon as he started hitting mitts, bill's like, "oh, the fire in his eyes." ""You could see it." "It was there." "Evan Tanner back."" "Oh, man." "As a fan, oh, my gosh." "And he told me that he had set a date for his sobriety." "And... which was kind of an interesting concept for me as the mom of an addict." "You know, it's like that's not how they do it traditionally, but I get what he was doing." "And then I got an email from him saying that he was gonna move to Vegas." "It made me very happy." "I wanted him to give it up and to get on with his life and be rid of that part, where he could feel like he could do things in life without alcohol." "When he decided to quit was about the time my wife moved out of our house." "You know, you know just from timetable, you know, he's got to be going through hell 'cause he quit cold Turkey." "He just walked away." "And he's calling me up, keeping me on the phone 'cause I'm in... you know, this was a very tough time for me." "He called me probably two or three times a day, sometimes for a couple hours at a time, you know, and I'm sure it was probably a distraction for him in some ways, but I don't think it was just him, "well, I'm just gonna use this," "so I don't think about drinking."" "I needed him." "I needed somebody." "And he stepped right up." "That was it." "I never heard anything more about it." "I mean, he never really talked about it." "It was done." "He sent me an email." "He said, you know, "how are you doing?" ""I recently parted ways with a friend of 15 years, alcohol." ""I'm almost 40 years old, " and only now do I consider myself a man." ""Now I can really begin my life." ""I am flying." ""I am not in a position financially or materially" ""that many in this society would consider impressive" ""for a man of my age, but they don't know what I know." ""You, being a sappy, overly emotional, melodramatic guy" ""like myself will understand all of this, I'm sure." ""Ha ha." "Just kidding." ""I suddenly got the urge to write you tonight." ""I'm not sure why." ""This letter's not what I expected." ""I began to write, and the words and thoughts" ""just came, as if the letter wrote itself." ""I can only think " that your present position in life" ""could be considered very similar to my own "in many respects." ""I see it all as a time of rebirth." ""I hope you're doing well." "Choose to fly, my friend, Evan."" "It's terrifying, where I went." "You know, I don't..." "I'm so..." "I'm so thankful that it's over, all that's over." "You know, 15 years of it, it's scary." "So I wouldn't tell anyone else to take that path." "He always talked about..." "you know, intimate things a lot of people would keep guarded, he let everyone know about." "And that's what was great." "And so I, in turn, I kind of knew what was going on in his life, so I was kind of nervous, you know, to ask him for the interview." "But I think, like..." "I think he thought" "I was kind of green, so he kind of threw me a bone, and he was like, "yeah, sure." "You know, I'll give you an interview."" "This is Ryan McKinnell sitting down with, well, I'm not gonna say new UFC middleweight," "BTU the returning UFC middleweight Evan Tanner." "I want to thank you a bunch for taking the time to talk with us, Evan." "No worries." "So how's everything going with you, man?" "You know, tell us what's been going on with you." "Been training." "That's about it." "Yeah, got settled in in Vegas, hard knocks Muay Thai." "Training every day." "That's about it." "Yup, yup." " Full-time job." " How's everything with your health?" "Everything feeling good?" "You feeling good?" "I'm feeling really good." "Yeah, focused on the task at hand and everything?" "I'm ready to go, you know." "A guy doesn't, you know, forget how to fight." "You know, I've been fighting so long." "You know, people have talked about ring rust and all that." "You know, that's not gonna play..." "I don't think that's gonna play, you know, a factor at all." "I feel good." "He was a guy that we really liked, and we really respected him." "And that was why, when he wanted to make that comeback, you know, we instantly brought him." "It wasn't like, "hey, Evan." "Fight in the smaller shows and work your way back in."" "We brought Evan Tanner right back in." "He cut everything that was in the way, and he focused on training." "So he didn't have a place to stay where he can focus on that, so he stayed right here, right underneath that ring over there." "And he spend probably two weeks, three weeks, maybe more." "He had his own key." "And he was very open to learn, so in the process of learning, he considered himself a beginner." "All right?" "So I will put him to spar with the regular class sometimes." "And one of the guys will be all eager... happy to spar with him, and Evan kick him in the leg and give him a big, fat, black bruise." "But the guy, instead of being all bitchy and complaining about it..." "the bruise, he would come back the day after and show it to everybody because Evan gave it to him." "As far as training went, like every aspect of his life, he was very giving." "He actually, you know, while he was getting ready for the fight for Okami, he took time out of his training to get me ready for a fight." "We trained and did a hardcore workout and got back to the apartment." "I said, "oh, we've got a couple hours." "We're gonna kill this movie."" ""No, no, no, no, no." ""Like, we... you're not gonna want to train "after this movie." "It's awesome." "It's awesome."" "So I was getting excited and asking, and he wouldn't tell me what it was." "Went and trained again, came back and, so excited, set up the laptop on the cardboard box and asked him what it was again, wouldn't tell me." "And then put it in, he's like, "just watch." "Just watch."" "And it was the cutting edge, which is a cheesy romantic comedy about a injured hockey player who turns figure skater." "And I was just blown away that Evan thought that I was..." "I don't know, I was like, "why the hell did you think" "I was gonna love this movie so much?" You know?" "Like, I don't skate." "I don't..." "I had a sponsor here in Vegas that knew Evan was here in Vegas." "He was getting ready to fight for the UFC, and they wanted to give him, like, I think it was, like, 35 grand for one fight." "Wanted to give him, like, 35 grand." "But he had to wear a shirt, you know, of the sponsor." "He's like, "um, no."" "Evan made his T-shirt, you know, and he kind of went to the people, and he wanted to be sponsored by the fans directly, which is, you know, a very interesting and, you know, unique approach." "And I guess I understood it to an extent, you know." "And I called him one time and asked him for a... for a glove." "He said, "who's it for?" And I said, "it's for my son."" "And he put a message on there." "And, when Evan gave you something, that was yours." "The message said, to Hampton, "speak true, dream big, live strong."" "He called me one night, and he said, "wade, do you think Hampton would mind if I borrowed those words?"" "And I said, "absolutely not."" "He would use... he was using himself as a common ground for everybody." "You would see that people were getting together just to see him back in the ring and all that." "And he was the power of one." "Many ones." "So he brought us together." "We like to hear guys that are like," ""whoever... whoever is perceived to be the best" ""and that I can climb up and, you know," ""get a little higher in the rankings "and possibly get a title fight," "I'll fight anybody, anywhere, anytime."" "And that's who Evan Tanner was." "How do you feel about this..." "the time off you've had from the last fight up until this moment?" "Preparation-wise, is there anything you feel you're gonna do different, technique-wise, or how you're gonna approach this?" "Had some things, you know, to kind of get over." "You know, my first..." "what's a way to say this?" "Took two years off." "Got in pretty bad shape." "Took me a while to get back..." "even back in training shape." "Went into my first fight, my first fight back, not feeling so well." "You know, everything stabilized." "I'm feeling really good physically." "The training's been just as intense." "It's just my body's responding better now." "The week before he fought my friend Kendall grove in the UFC, I think his last UFC fight, and it was like the same thing." "He had no one to train with, you know." "He was at warrior gym, and he was by himself, and, like I said, I'd been there before, so, you know, I've been there, even my first UFC fight, you know." "He was going there alone too, so I helped him a little bit." "I didn't, like, really help him as far as like, "this is what you got to do to beat Kendall," at all, but I was just, like, a body for him" "to, like, drill his technique on, and I remember thinking that, like, you know," ""this isn't the guy I fought."" "At first, I was trying to think, like, "man, I'm a lot better now."" "You know what I mean? "I can beat, you know, Evan Tanner easy now."" "But the first time we fought, we stared each other down, and then he turned around, and I remember he had, like, huge muscles in his back, you know." "His upper traps and his shoulders and stuff were big, and, you know, he turned around and he walked this way, and I followed behind him off the stage, and then after, like, the second day of training" "or the third day of training, I was thinking," ""man, you know, I got much better now." "I'm really good."" "And he took a shower and took his shirt off, and he didn't have any of those, any of the muscles like he did, you know." "All I could see was a lot of freckles, you know." "It stuck out in my mind." "His electrolytes and energy system being messed up from years of drinking." "Like, he didn't feel right a lot of the time, so, like... and I thought, you know, we were talking earlier." "He had good days and bad." "He's just kind of like his... you know, almost like he'd kind of drank himself diabetic or something." "He called me into the washroom one morning and is like, "look at that."" "And I looked in the toilet, and his piss looked like motor oil." "No one else would be training, let alone ready to step into the biggest venue in MMA." "I don't believe he wanted to acknowledge that." "Evan, when I was in the dressing room with him, was..." "I don't know that I've ever experienced anything like that." "I mean, the guy didn't even want his hands wrapped for the fight." "Like, you know, normal things that you would do for a fight." "Coming from the old-school nature, he just wanted to put his gloves on, go out there, and scrap." "I thought, and I know you'll think I'm an idiot," "I thought he'd beat Kendall grove." "I really did, and I went up to Lorenzo Fertitta after the fight, and I said, "I thought Evan won."" "And he said, "'cause you're thinking with your heart, not your head." "He didn't win."" ""But I thought he did."" "It's different with Evan how he dealt with the losses because he was not just a fighter." "He felt like he won because he had beat his addictions, and he wanted to drink, and he didn't." "And he didn't touch alcohol after that, and he really... he really stuck to his guns, and he stayed clean, and he was like, "I'm gonna get back in there and win a fucking fight."" "I told him I had a really big fight coming up and that I'd be honored if he would come down and corner me, and he accepted, and he flew down to corner me." "I end up losing that fight in the third round, and it was good to have Evan there." "We just hung out in the hotel room, and, you know, we had both kind of on the same page." "Like, coming off a loss is a tough thing, and being with a guy who..." "like, my best friend, who understood me and understood that situation, was... you know, he really picked my spirits up." "He just really has been through stuff and can really understand and relate and give that advice 'cause he's been there, done that." "He just... he was really good at comprehending things and understanding and how to fix things, better with other people than himself." "You know, believe that you can, even as a single individual, you can change the world because your... your words and actions resonate out eternal in a sense, you know." "I can stand up for these things that I believe in, I can stand up," "I can speak out, and I will be heard." "I can change the world." "That's my motivation." "I can change the world." "Hmm." "You know, he flew out to build a playground for kids he had no connection with." "You know, it was because he actually believed that we all are connected." "Helping children and helping people have what he didn't have, showing them that you could do and achieve anything you set your mind to." "As long as you believe you can make an impact, you can make an impact." "And I think that's just for him what it was." "It was just... it could be the person you smile at today." "You know, it could be the very smallest thing." "A sign or show of compassion you could do today could turn into something huge for somebody else tomorrow." "So we were each other's support in different ways." "He definitely exposed me to a lot." "He was kind of... didn't really like to think things thoroughly through." "He'd always give me crap for, like, just going backpacking, but I'd think, "okay, I need to bring this in case this happens."" "And he's like, "gosh, you think about things so much."" "I'm like, "well, yeah, you never know "if something's gonna encounter." ""You're gonna have to protect yourself or save yourself or whatever."" "You know, and he's like, "yeah, I guess you're right." "I could use some of that."" "I remember the last time he said that, we went backpacking about a month, maybe two months before he passed, and..." "I remember just thinking about..." "Whatever goal he had in sight, he was gonna go there." "You know." "That's what I thought really... with the whole incident, what happened, did he really want to kill himself?" "Did he rea... didn't want to kill himself?" "But when I heard the story, when he went out there, the first thing that came to my mind was saying that, okay, he told himself he can actually make this back." "He's gonna do it, you know." "Walking back, God knows how many Miles without any drink." "I think that was typical him." "And I got a text message from him too." ""I'm in Clapp Springs." ""I ran out of water." ""I feel like shit, but I'm okay." ""If you don't hear from me by tomorrow in the morning, call search and rescue."" "And another message was like, "I going to try to hike the 5 Miles back to camp."" "And after that, I call him, and I call him, and I call him." "I never got an answer from him." "And next day I just..." "I just did what he told me to do." "Hey, this is Evan." "Hey, sorry, I..." "forever, last time we talked." "It's my nature." "Uh..." "You know, we usually spoke nearly every day, and I always called him E.T." "I never called him Evan." "And for some reason I said..." "I called his number, and he said, "hello."" "And I said, "Evan."" ""Wade, I'm surprised I'm getting a signal."" "I said, "what are you doing?"" "And he told me, he said, "wade, I think I'm dying of thirst."" "And I couldn't..." "he couldn't hear me." "And I kept hollering, "Evan, Evan."" "And I get, "hello?"" "And I thought, well, he'll get a signal." "He'll call me back." "I hung up the phone." "And I waited, I called him, left several messages." "And I knew something was wrong, but I didn't know where he was at." "I couldn't help him." "So I waited." "I called oceanside." "I didn't know where he was at." "And I started filling out a missing person's report." "I told 'em Evan, Evan Tanner, and then 20-something minutes into it, she said she couldn't give me any more information, that somebody had already filed a missing person's report, and I said, "please help me."" "She says, "I can't give you any information."" "I said, "please." "Tell me," I said, "this is my friend."" "And she said, "well, we found his motorcycle."" "Yeah, I knew then." "But that's the last words I got to speak to him." "And that's the old saying, say something kind, because it could be your last words." "I bought a case of water, and I was just like," ""would one or two bottles get him back?" ""Three?" "Half a case?" "If he just had a little more?"" "We had the really dubious task of going through Evan's apartment in oceanside and having to pack it all up and get it out and then catalog it, and I wanted to..." "I wanted to be there, and I kind of wanted to talk to him one last time before it was all kind of taken apart." "Woke up the next morning and walked down to the beach." "I just wanted to feel kind of what... what his life might have been like, and I just felt how peaceful the end of his life must have felt, how it just felt like home to me even." "Evan did not drink at all when he lived here at this complex." "I never saw him have a drink, never drank." "We offered him drinks all the time 'cause we'd hang out and barbecue, drink, and always offered, but he never drank." "It's been said that Evan had become sober at times, and he could kind of..." "kind of manage the drinking." "And some people were saying that he'd even been sober for, like, up to a year before he died." "You know, I don't believe that's true." "Yeah, yeah, yeah, I caught wind of that." "But I'd also seen him sober up a couple times, you know what I mean, so I don't know." "I don't know for sure." "I wasn't there." "And I hope..." "I hope he was completely sober, and, like I said, I don't know 100%." "I said, "it's like fighting."" "I said, "do you train for a fight?" ""Do you tell yourself I'm not gonna do that during when I train for my fight?"" "And he goes, "yeah, but I know the fight's gonna end." "The fight's gonna be over."" "I said, "okay." I said, "well, once you can tell yourself... the fight's never over."" "I said, "because that's the problem." ""For you, the drinking is a fight, "and the fight's never gonna be over." ""You've always got to train to keep that away."" "And he goes, "you don't have to tell me."" "He says, "I've been doing that for a long time."" "He goes, "I just keep losing."" "You know, from my battles with being a drunk, is that, what Evan did wrong, is he just quit drinking, okay?" "He just quit drinking." "He didn't..." "he didn't kind of deal with all the pain that he was going through and what was happening when he was on that bender." "And a lot of people wanted to point fingers at Evan's relationship splitting or his upbringing as a child or his career as to why he would drink." "And the fact is, there's no single factor that causes someone to make the choice to become an alcoholic." "It's a very generalized need to console oneself." "Yeah, okay, this guy had a problem with alcohol, and he had some demons or whatever it was." "It didn't affect him as a person or as a human being." "People can look at Evan Tanner's story... there's people who are struggling right now as we speak like Evan Tanner did with alcohol." "Evan Tanner was this incredible guy, gifted guy, battled with alcohol, and you see how it ends." "You see how his story ends." "And your story could end the same way." "I believe that Evan's death could have been avoided, and I think that he would want everybody to learn from his death, especially the younger people, you know... always know the consequences of what you're gonna do" "and that the risks that you're gonna take and the people that you're gonna affect because, even if Evan didn't realize how many people cared about him, his family, friends, and even people that didn't know him loved him." "And so he had an effect on the whole world." "What a... you know, what an amazing human being he was and a lovely, kind, stubborn, bull-headed, grouchy, grumpy, single-minded pain in the ass he genuinely was." "And I loved him probably more than anybody I've ever known." "Evan had the heart of a champion, and what defines a champion is getting up when you're down." "You know what I mean?" "It's the guy who, after he's beaten, he stands up, rises up, and then succeeds again." "And I think that he had that in him." "Excuse me." "I have something to say." "Evan Tanner, you're the strongest man I've ever fought in my life." "And congratulations for the championship." "Evan never did any harm to anybody, only himself, you know, unless he was kicking the shit out of somebody." "You know, when he would put the wood to the motherfucker." "Okay." "Don't fool yourself." "Evan Tanner was a bad motherfucker." "All right." ""Fighter." "I'm not a fighter."" "Okay." "Bullshit, Evan." "Bullshit." "When I see you," "I guarantee the first thing we're gonna do is fucking fight." "You're gonna be like, "look at all my philosophy bullshit now."" "Yeah." "Pop." "To me, he was like a ghost." "He came through my life, mess it up, change it a little bit, make me see things, and then disappear and go... keep on going." "He really taught me what's important in life." "It just... it's kind of like, you know, a dream." "You know, something..." "it's like a crowd is there in your dream, and he's kind of always there." "But I think he's probably looking out for me." "If he was reading this story about himself as the character, he'd be satisfied." "He'd appreciate this person and their ups and downs and still being able to deal with it." "And, honestly, I do feel that he would be happy with the ending." "This was..." "this was on his Internet page." ""I haven't figured out the meaning of life yet." ""I do know what gives life meaning, though." ""It's not wealth." "It's not power." ""It's a simple thing." ""It is the trusting and truthful bond one has "with oneself and others." ""It is the people in life that give it meaning and depth." ""I'll always consider myself "a fortunate and wealthy man if I am surrounded by good people."" "I never met a guy who would go from one extreme to another." "You know, he never walked that fine line." "He was either way over here, or he was way over here." "So he's been on the bottom of the Mountain." "He's been to the top." "Everywhere in between." "And, again, it was an experience." "And instead of just telling everybody the good stuff, you know, he put the bad stuff in there too." "Evan showed the world what he was, and he wasn't always perfect." "But he showed 'em he could be perfect." "One of the ultimate things a human can learn is kindness for their fellow humans and understanding." "I'd like to teach those things to my children." ""If you can count five good friends on one hand," "I said, "I think you're a pretty lucky man."" "♪ I am the boy your mother wanted ♪" "♪ you to meet ♪" "♪ but I am broken and torn ♪" "♪ with halos at my feet ♪" "♪ and with your purest light ♪" "♪ why don't you shine on me?" "♪" "♪ oh, I should have been an angel ♪" "♪ but I'm too dumb to speak ♪" "♪ now as she gets nearer ♪" "♪ the visions get clearer ♪" "♪ I'm kneeling, weeping ♪" "♪ I will hold her dear ♪" "♪ oh, if your eyes water ♪" "♪ you've got your favorite number ♪" "♪ to spin ♪" "♪ and oh ♪" "♪ what a crying shame ♪" "♪ a crying shame ♪" "♪ what we became ♪" "♪ murdered my throat, screaming bloody all night ♪" "♪ hit him with a book ♪" "♪ and how he crumbles ♪" "♪ oh, you should have seen how the arches tumble ♪" "♪ they're golden no more ♪" "♪ now I'm smiling in my blood ♪" "♪ I'm caught in a whirlwind ♪" "♪ I'm going to heaven ♪" "♪ I'm standing on trial ♪" "♪ and it's painted on canvas ♪" "♪ an eternal testament ♪" "♪ to how we are so animalistic ♪" "♪ and oh ♪" "♪ what a crying shame ♪" "♪ a crying shame ♪" "♪ what we became ♪" "♪ I bowed my head in the morning light ♪" "♪ and said good night ♪" "♪ I held her hand ♪" "♪ and I, I kissed her eyes ♪" "♪ stumbled down the stairs ♪" "♪ hang myself on high ♪" "♪ and I started for the town ♪" "♪ lying' on the front yard ♪" "♪ and died ♪"