Former Ultimate Fighting Championship middleweight champion Evan Tanner was found dead near Palo Verde, Calif. on Monday. He was 37.
Tanner had trekked into the desert on a journey to “cleanse” himself, according to Douglas Vincitorio of Tanner’s management team. “He went out to the desert to do a ‘cleansing’ as he called it. Kind of like ‘Survivorman.’” These short trips were not new to Tanner, said Vincitorio. It is something that he has done numerous times over the years.
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Fail. Why would you do something idiotic like that. Beats me. He deserves a Darwin Award.
Anonymous,
There are plenty of reasons to do the things that Evan Tanner did during his life. He was purposefully attempting to challenge himself. That’s the entire reason he stepped into the octagon ring in the first place. Evan was always seeking the next personal challenge for himself. I believe from what I heard of his comments on his previous journeys like this that he believed them to be cleansing.
Not that I would expect anyone who is either too stupid or cowardly to even leave their own name on web blog to understand.
Personally, I don’t find anything wrong with what he did. He went into the situation fully aware that any failure of equipment could cost him his life. That was PART of the challenge. It was a conscious decision on his part to put himself into harms way in pursuit of greater enlightenment.
Evan lived on a different level than you or most people, he wasn’t here to play things safely. I think America could do worse than to have a few more men like him around. The adventurous spirit is what made our country as great as it is, the decline in the willing acceptance of risk is a major contributor to the decline of our society.
One might question the reward to risk ratio of partaking in a desert exodus but then once again one must understand that Evan’s greatest sense of reward came from neither money nor accolade. That he finally found something that bested him diminishes the quest in no way.