A final farewell to Evan Tanner
Published by Staff on September 10th, 2008 in Current Events, Remembering

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At the age of 37, Evan Tanner passed away late last week due to extreme heat exposure in the Southeastern part of California. A month prior to his death, Tanner blogged online about his upcoming trip to the desert.

“I plan on going so deep into the desert, that any failure of my equipment could cost me my life. I’ve been doing a great deal of research and study. I want to know all I can about where I’m going, and I want to make sure I have the best equipment.”

He talked about the trip as he did with any of his other adventurous journeys in life — with the same kind of curiousness, excitement, and throw-caution-to-the-wind spirit that personified who he was as a person and as an MMA fighter.

In a profession full of larger-than-life characters, Evan Tanner stood out amongst everyone else because he didn’t want to be part of the traditional crowd. He was his own man and drifted from Amarillo, Texas to Gresham, Oregon to Oceanside, California. What made Tanner such a fascinating personality in the MMA world was his ability to emotionally connect with the fans. He was a flawed person who didn’t try to sugercoat or hide his problems in life behind a veneer of marketing & spin. You felt like you knew Evan Tanner, even if you had never met him in person.

“He would write with painful honesty and admirable vision about every aspect of his journey through this life, and when I would read his words I would always get food for thought,” said UFC commentator Joe Rogan. “His blog was a porthole into the window of his soul, and reading his brave, uncensored thoughts gave me an invigorated sense of purpose to do the same. Evan’s take on life was like that of a character in an adventure novel, and his thirst for experience was actually what lead him into fighting in the first place.”

One minute, Evan was writing about turning his house in Oregon into a place for fighters to stay at and the next minute he was writing about losing his boat. You never quite knew what to expect as far as what he was going to do next in life, but you knew that it was going to be some new challenge and you half-jokingly hoped he wouldn’t get hurt in the process.

“Evan meant a lot of things to a lot of people,” remarked fighter Ian Dawe. “To some he was a drifter, a poet, a warrior. To others he was a world champion and source of inspiration, he was my best friend. More importantly, Evan was his own man. He knew his path, and he walked it, as he will continue to walk in our hearts.”

The last year of Evan Tanner’s life proved to be both triumphant and demoralizing. He was trying to conquer the demons in his life (gambling & alcholism) and after a long hiatus from fighting in MMA competition, Tanner was set to make a come back in UFC. Just making it back to the top promotion in the world of MMA was an accomplishment in and of itself. However, Evan struggled to stay competitive in the 185-pound division. He was pitted against Yushin Okami (Evan lost) and soon found himself in the equivalent of a ‘loser leaves town’ match against Kendall Grove on Spike TV. Tanner lost the fight — it wasn’t even close. At that point, Evan’s career in UFC as a competitive fighter was over.

Looking back at Tanner’s career in UFC, it was clear that whenever he stepped into the cage, you knew that he was going to bring everything he had to the table. There are fighters who talk the talk and those who walk the walk. Evan Tanner did both throughout his professional fighting career. His win over David Terrell to capture the UFC Middleweight title was a thing of beauty, and his brutal slugfest with Rich Franklin was the stuff champions are made of. Because most of Evan’s UFC fights took place in the company’s pre-Spike TV era, not a lot of UFC’s newer fans got a chance to watch Evan at his peak. However, the diehard MMA fans who followed the sport for years knew what Evan Tanner stood for and what he was all about as both a competitor and athlete.

“It’s pretty easy to elaborate on why Tanner was and will remain my favorite fighter,” said MMA on Tap writer John Chandler in an article published online yesterday. “Just about every single one of his fights were exciting. They had you on the edge of your seat. What Tanner lacked in skill, he made up for in heart. There were many a night where Tanner had to overcome the brink of defeat in order to squeak out a win. It was extremely entertaining watching him do so for years. It also seems that was the way that Tanner lived life.”

There’s always a tendency in the sports world for fans to over-romanticize their favorite icon or hero when they die. History is usually re-written in some form or another to try to airbrush the faults and failures of a person when their time has passed on earth. While the reaction to Tanner’s death has been emotional and sincere in the MMA business amongst insiders, fighters, promoters, agents, and fans, it has also been thankfully accurate and not over-the-top.

“Evan Tanner was a drunk and an alcoholic. Many of the pseudo-obituaries on other pages have decided to ignore this fact, but I’m including it because I think it’s probably one of the most defining characteristics of his personality,” exclaimed MMA writer Ryan Harkness. “For the two years he spent away from the UFC he drank himself nearly to death. Then he came to the point where a decision had to be made, and he chose life. He chose a day to stop drinking, and he did it: he stopped drinking. He worked towards returning to the UFC and he did it. He returned to the UFC. Even through his losses I found inspiration, because Evan had gone as far down the path of self-destruction as one can, and had made it back to tell the tale. Those who ignore that facet of Evan’s existence for reasons of political correctness are in the wrong. We don’t care about Evan Tanner in spite of his shortcomings. We cared about him because of his shortcomings.”

I’m not sure what Evan Tanner would think about the outpouring of emotion from fans about his death, but I suspect that he would be heartened by the support and would encourage those same fans to support others in need of assistance in life. You can use many words to describe the life and times of Evan Tanner, but boring sure isn’t one of them.