When Evan Tanner woke up that morning he was probably already dehydrated. During the previous day’s long motorcycle ride from the coast, the wind had secretly siphoned off a great deal of his fluid. When the sun came up and the temperature began to rise, a little cone-shaped part of his brain, the hypothalamus, sensed the change and sent word to his heart. The heart beat a little faster to move blood from his core to his skin, where the heat could dissipate. His skin was cooler because, in the meantime, the hypothalamus had directed the sweat glands to excrete water. Water that came from his blood.
It’s an ingenious system: Blood circulates both heat and water. But the system is expensive. It costs fluid. Without incoming water the blood becomes more concentrated, which means there’s less volume, which means the heart has to pump faster to move ever-thicker blood.
Pascoe conducts experiments with people’s temperatures, dialing up the heat in a controlled way to see what happens. In one experiment, for example, he planned to raise his subjects’ temperatures two degrees centigrade.
“The first degree was easy,” Pascoe said. “We had them doing a sort of walking workload, no problem. Then in the next half-degree, suddenly people weren’t so jovial. Not so happy. Then came the last half-degree.”
People got aggressive, he said. They grew profane. They snapped, “Shut up! Leave me alone!”
At higher temperatures, he said, people lose their mental acuity. “I’ve seen people mumble about things with no idea what they were saying,” he said. “It’s bizarre behavior.”
Dizziness sets in. Then disorientation.
—-
All through the night Gayoso tried to reach Tanner. When morning came he remembered his friend’s first message about search and rescue.
He paced his house in Oceanside, wondering what to do. Had Tanner’s phone simply lost power? Or was it something worse? The whole thing seemed absurd. How does one even call “search and rescue”? He went online to look for a phone number.
A short while later, as sheriff’s deputy Justin Hettich made a rare traffic stop outside Palo Verde, he received a call. A man with an Uruguayan accent wanted to read him a couple of text messages. Something about his friend. An ultimate fighter. Evan Tanner.
Hettich, other deputies, a search-and-rescue contractor, and a marine helicopter team searched the lonely countryside for Tanner’s campsite. Even knowing his general position, they took a couple of days to find the tarp and motorcycle. Soon after they found his body.
He had made it almost four miles on the walk back to camp. He had sat down and taken pictures of himself, about 20 in all, right up to the moment of unconsciousness.
Then he had laid his head against a rock as if it were a pillow; not because he was sleepy but likely because in his dizziness the rock provided orientation. A rock to prop him up, if only for a little while.
Nature, in the end, forced him to submit.
—-
In October, in Amarillo’s dirt-floored cattle arena, a man with a microphone shouted a question to the crowd of about 4,000: “Are you people ready for a fight?”
Yes, they shouted. They were ready.
“I said, are you ready for a fight?”
Yes!, they shouted. And this time they meant it.
The fight’s promoters had known Tanner and organized the event as a tribute. They invited his family into the cage, then announced the creation of a college scholarship in Tanner’s name. The moment came with some awkwardness; Tanner hadn’t spoken to his family in years, and his friends say he didn’t care for them very much.
Tanner’s mother, Sue Craig, is reluctant to talk about her son. “I guess what I’m wondering is, what’s in it for us?” she says. There may be money down the road, she explains, when Hollywood gets word of Tanner’s life.
She offers some broad sketches, some sense of how his childhood had unfolded. The father gone, the mother gone. The cold relationship with the stepfather.
She pauses, then adds, “I’m not sure how that’s relevant, though. I’m not sure that affected him.”
Except of course it did. Throughout his life Evan Tanner drifted — geographically, emotionally, physically — searching for a home. Searching to calm his restless mind, to prepare himself for a fatherhood that never came, to discover a purpose for his great and varied talents. And then, when he came near to any acceptance, he abandoned it.
The crowd in Amarillo was getting twitchy, after a few undercard matches and innumerable beers. Fights broke out in the audience and drew as much attention as the contests in the ring. A rowdy bunch, spoiling for action. Then, almost at the end of the night, Evan Tanner appeared on two giant screens, at each end of the stadium. When the crowd saw him they exploded with cheers. “Evaaan! Evaaaaan!”
His soft-spoken voice filled the place. He had something to say.
“One of the ultimate things a human can learn,” he said, “is kindness for their fellow humans.”
He might as well have delivered 4,000 simultaneous knockout punches, so complete was the silence.
Onscreen he paused. He looked down, as though speaking to himself now.
“I’d like to teach those things to my children.”
The great tragedy of Tanner’s life, in the end, was that he was right about himself. In each of his endeavors — his adventures, his challenges — he was indeed only a student, preparing for some later task. But that was also his greatest triumph: At the end of his posthumous message in Amarillo, the restless, hard-bitten crowd rose to its feet and cheered, against all likelihood, for the abstract cause of simple kindness.
This article originally appeared in the February 2009 issue of Men’s Journal.
Print this article
January 14th, 2009 at 4:56 pm
Impressive and awesome article about an amazing and enigmatic man. It’s strange that the more remarkable things about him people share, the more facts and details that come out, the more mysterious he seems.
We ,miss you so much Evan. I often wonder if you had any idea how much you were loved by so many…
[Reply]
Zach Reply:
January 15th, 2009 at 12:11 pm
Not a fan of UFC, but the article can be summed up in one word, “amazing.”
[Reply]
January 14th, 2009 at 5:56 pm
What a great read
[Reply]
January 14th, 2009 at 6:24 pm
Awesome writeup.
[Reply]
January 14th, 2009 at 7:28 pm
The finest article about Tanner i’ve read yet. Informative, respectful and honest. Too bad Zuffa and the suits at UFC couldnt or wouldnt offer this pioneer a tribute fitting of his accomplishments, corporate or otherwise.
[Reply]
January 14th, 2009 at 7:38 pm
amazing man thanks for giving your time to sharee this
[Reply]
January 14th, 2009 at 7:54 pm
This article is much appreciated. Tanner’s story and message have been a great inspiration for me as of lately and I hope it spreads to others as it has to me- “exponentially” to others as he might say.
[Reply]
January 14th, 2009 at 8:49 pm
awesome…i hope evan’s name is one that lives on for years in peoples minds and hearts…and i hope more articles like this continue to come out…so many question’s left unanswered…
[Reply]
January 15th, 2009 at 2:22 am
Ummmmm … there’s lots of folks with screws loose with substance abuse problems who do interesting things and die in bizarre and fascinating ways. I guess just about all of them don’t waste a freakish amount of genetically granted athletic prowess, nobody wants to hear about them.
[Reply]
Frankie Reply:
February 25th, 2009 at 6:21 am
If that’s all you got out of this article, then you really should take some reading comprhension classes.
[Reply]
Joe Reply:
December 17th, 2009 at 9:18 am
Reality, you are a Dumbass without the courage to write your name on a post. Evan Tanner was a good man. He did things you wish you were man enough to do. He faced his demons and won the challenge and was a great role model for todays youth. You are a spineless little ferret who hides in shame behind a keyboard!
[Reply]
January 15th, 2009 at 10:13 am
beautiful in every way, if only all men and women had such clarity, including myself.
People like Evan Tanner live within all of us.
[Reply]
January 15th, 2009 at 10:47 am
Evan Tanner was one of the first fights I remember seeing on UFC. I can’t believe they didn’t do anything to honor the guy. Shameful.
[Reply]
January 15th, 2009 at 11:27 am
I was lucky enough to meet Evan after the Grove fight. He was nice enough to sit down and talk with me a while. I won’t forget that kindness.
[Reply]
January 15th, 2009 at 6:41 pm
Great powerful moving artical about a great man who wanted nothing from anyone but him self he will be greatly missed but this world and its sad that we will never get to see what a great man he would turned out to be
RIP EVEN TANNER
[Reply]
January 22nd, 2009 at 4:14 pm
I always loved Tanner. I used to joke about his raspy voice, but it was cool because he was unique. When he spoke after a fight, win or lose, he was always very humble. You will be missed Evan, may your Lord give you peace.
[Reply]
February 8th, 2009 at 11:28 pm
Sad. Evan was not one of my guys I follow that much ,but I always noticed him and admired him. Sad that so many young men have so many demons in their minds. Life is fun, live it that way. I try to tell young people stop putting so much stress, drama, tension and things that will cloud the real fun things in life. Be happy. Rest young man you have reached many people, be happy.
[Reply]
February 12th, 2009 at 12:01 am
Not many people know that before becoming a fighter Evan used to seek the readings of pshycics. I still remember Evan trying and get me to go along even offering to pay for it. I never did go but I asked him one time what she had told him. Never a guy that boasted or bragged. In fact he rarely talked about the amazing things he had already done back then. She told me I would become famous. He said, Something about the stars planets and dates. I would have LMAO at anyone else but I knew Evan. Is there something to that crap after all? I dont know. I thought the writting was on the wall the whole time.
[Reply]
March 10th, 2009 at 8:39 am
Wow! One of the most moving articles i’ve ever had the honor to read… Gone but not forgotten… BELIEVE IN THE POWER OF ONE… What a beautiful life… What a beautiful ending!!!
[Reply]
March 14th, 2009 at 1:33 pm
Evan was an amazing, brilliant, light in this world… I would love to know how I can get a copy of this write up. A truely great work of art.
[Reply]
May 30th, 2009 at 3:41 pm
I believe Evan…
[Reply]
July 16th, 2009 at 1:13 pm
This was an amazing post and I know my brother Dan Elliott had all his heart in this! Dan loved Tanner very much like a brother and I know he will miss him so. He is with the Lord now so he is doing better than us!
Love you brother.
[Reply]
November 25th, 2009 at 6:14 pm
Shit, I’ve never even heard of this dude before tonight and I am ashamed of some of the things I do and I’m still alive…..
[Reply]
November 30th, 2009 at 5:35 pm
I didn’t know Evan at all, just what I had seen on T.V. and what I read after his untimely death.
Your article fills in some of the questions I had about him before his life in fighting.
Seemed like a normal guy with gifts and curses like many of us.
I wish I would have known him.
RIP Evan.
[Reply]
December 23rd, 2009 at 3:21 pm
Great writing, the compassion and respect that his life warranted comes thru in the article. Also, excellent medical description in explaining the mechanics of how his body ultimately wore down in the desert.
[Reply]