My friend, Evan.

At his fight in Columbus with the first Team Tanner shirts on.
Training at Integrated on his visit to Indiana



This picture with the look on his face is one of my favorite pics of him.


I wish that I had an inspiring Evan Tanner story like so many of those I have read over the last few years but I don’t. My Evan story is just about a friendship not unlike any other friendship between two people. It is a story that I need to tell but I have been reluctant. I think somehow I feel by telling my story I will lose the last part of him that I have been desperately hanging onto. The truth is Evan is gone from this earth but he will never be forgotten by those of us who loved him and those of you who love to tell tales or read of his adventures.

I met Dan many moons ago and had no idea this thing called MMA would someday become my life. I had even been to fights but had no idea what I was watching lol On my first trip to Albuquerque I bugged Dan to let me watch a fight. He relented and put in a VHS (tells you how long ago that was)of a UFC fight. It showed the entrance of two fighters and one fighter kept my attention. I was and I hate to say it mesmerized by his intenseness. In fact I was almost frightened by him. Here was this intense man with crazy hair and a determination that demanded respected immediately. I watched the fight and within the rounds of that fight, I not unlike so many others began my love affair with Mixed Martial Arts which would soon lead to a marriage of it(not to Dan but to the sport haha).

Let’s fast forward to the age of Myspace. I started a profile on the demand of a friend and paid no attention to it. It was an alien world and I am a creature of habit. Finally, I was bullied into working on my profile and building my friends list. I belong to a great group on a forum so they were the people who I began with and searched through their friends list to build my own. One day skimming a list I saw him. There was that scary, intense man who was the fighter in the first UFC fight I had watched. Here was the beginning of my love affair with this sport. I have never been one to be a “fan” or at least not a very dedicated one. The best I had ever been was an Andre Agassi poster on my wall in college and a Cannon Snappy for a Christmas gift the same year. I decided to send Evan Tanner a letter and tell him about my first fight and my life now in the MMA world. Much to my surprise, Evan returned my email. This was the beginning of many, many emails and a collaboration of ideas, thoughts and laughter. We went on emailing for months and getting to know about each other’s lives until I mentioned going to Dan’s UFC fight in Vegas and he mentioned meeting. It was set and we were going to meet. I was at the weigh ins and there he was. I heard someone yelling what appeared to be similar to my name(and with my name you get used to answering to close to anything) and then a whole group of guys yelling my name. I look over and there he was with his shit eating grin and I just started laughing. (A funny note is that Evan refused to pronounce my name as I do. He said I didn’t pronounce it phonetically correct and he was going to do so. In all of the years we we were friends not once did he say my name as it is.) I met up with my friend Lara after the weigh in and she took a picture of us. I wish I had taken a million pictures. Over the next few years there were chances to take more but I guess I thought there would be years of chances and I was sadly wrong.

We went back to our lives after that weekend and he went on to win his fight the next weekend. He didn’t seem as happy as I thought he would be. He was unsettled and he said he was taking a break. What a break he took haha Evan’s next journey was one crazy ride. I am a worrier by nature and those of you who know Evan know he isn’t one to have people close to him for long periods of time. People have always flowed in and out of his life. I was fortunate that he was patient with me lol I wouldn’t worry but then I would read something or a few weeks would go by and I would email demanding proof he was still alive. He would always respond by email or a drunk phone call in the middle of the night. I knew he had to find his own way and I was an ear when he needed it and a voice of reason even sometimes when he didn’t.

Dan and I became pregnant and I asked Dan if it would be ok if we named the baby boy after Evan. It had double the meaning. The pregnancy was rough and I also wanted to honor my friend. The Celtic meaning of Evan is young warrior and with all of the trouble that I had during this pregnancy the baby growing inside me was a warrior to live as long as he did. Evan was thrilled to have a namesake! He loved kids and so often talked of having his own. I know everyone saw Evan differently and in spite of his struggles and his demons he had something valuable to pass on to the world and I believed our son could learn so much from a man like him. The pregnancy did not go full term. I was so very devastated but I think Evan took it harder than Dan or I did. He said our Evan gave him hope for a future family of his own and he really wanted that for himself one day.

Our friendship forged ahead and one day he left me a message with his “project voice“. He spoke a certain way when he wanted to turn an idea or a dream into a reality. He decided he was going to make his house in Oregon into a fighter’s refuge. He wanted our help. I don’t know that people had the ability to deny Evan so ahead we went. We found sponsors and a lawyer to help with the details and started laying the ground work. Evan was somewhat impatient and jumped ahead and the outcome was not what anyone expected lol He tried to pull away after the failed project and he wrote me this email about how he let me down and he wished he wouldn’t have brought me into his chaos and on and on. I was always straight with Evan and I told him he messed up but that’s when you need your friends. They help you clean up the mess and once things are ok again they make fun of you for it and I did make fun of him for it lol There were other ideas and other projects he would think of and send emails and I’d get phone calls. And then one day we started talking about his lack of enthusiasm for the marketing world and the idea of being sponsored solely by the people who supported him the most was conceved. Evan had a huge following on myspace. He personally wrote back to the people who emailed him and he had started his blogging and he wanted these people to be a real part of what he was doing. I thought it was an incredible idea. He asked if I would help and I said I would do whatever I could. I was not in the best of places in my life so I said I didn’t know how much I could actually do but if he needed me I’d do whatever.

Team Tanner began. Evan had asked someone else to head Team Tanner for him and the beginning stages started. Evan was very protective of his name and his image or at least when other people represented him HaHa He did not agree with the way the other person was handling things even though I am sure he was doing a good job it just wasn’t EXACTLY what Evan wanted. He asked me if I would step up and help. I had no idea what I was getting myself into but I would never change it for the world. We didn’t have a clear concept so we not only had to set that but it had to satisfy Evan. Everyone who has met, been friends with, read his blogs or watched his fight has a perception of Evan Tanner. I know he is an inspiration and a hero to many, many people and it is deserved but he was also a complete pain in the ass! He was difficult to please and to this day I will never understand how I achieved that most of the time or we didn’t end up strangling each other through the process of Team Tanner. He would want things one way one day and then completely change things around the next. I got dizzy trying to keep up. I believed in Evan and Team Tanner and there was no way I was going to give up on it so there were plenty of rough bumps on the road. Team Tanner began to mean as much to me as it did Evan. I put a lot of myself and my energy into it and the reward was unbelievable.

The first t-shirt was created and we had no idea what we were doing so it was decided that I would ship them from my house. My house seriously became a warehouse. There were t-shirts, envelopes and stuff everywhere. People would send me their money orders and info, I would mail out the shirts, email Evan the info, he would mail out the autographed items and once a week I would mail him the money orders. I don’t remember why he hesitated about Paypal but finally he decided to go with it. I still mailed the t-shirts from my house though. It was a crazy mess but those months in the beginning stages of Team Tanner and the people who joined are forever etched in my heart. We all believed in the same thing and we all came together to support Evan. It was truly magic. I loved the next shirts (the Believe ones) and as much as it was a relief to warehouse the shirts through someone else I missed the craziness and I felt some of the original magic was somehow lost. There were still tons of emails but the bond with the first members of Team Tanner is something I will always be grateful for.

Evan’s first loss was hard but with it being his first fight back it was understandable. I didn’t talk to him after but Dan did and I knew he was taking it hard. I didn’t want to smother him (a tendency I have when people are hurting)so I just left him a message and told him to call when he was ready. The next night the phone rang and life went on. He did a few crazy things in the next few weeks and I couldn’t believe the response. Evan spent a week in a casino spending about $200 and not once picking up a drink and he was getting hate mail. People were acting like he was squandering their own money. I know that people sent money in to support Evan but I also know how much it was and the money sent didn’t even cover the cost of the postage to get the shirts out let alone the shirts themselves. He would be upset that I am saying that but it is the truth and I think people who sent those emails should know it. It broke my heart to read those emails and for the first time in my life my faith in people was shaken. It was heartbreaking. I fought back and Evan got angry at me for the first time. He kept saying if they don’t understand there is no way I can make them so I was fighting a losing battle. He kept me from sending some replies by making him let him read them first and there were a few times that I returned the favor. He loved the contact with people but there were times he was completely overwhelmed by it. I can’t say that he ever really understood what people saw in him. He would actually get upset sometimes about someone saying he was a hero to them. I think he was afraid he wouldn’t be able to live up to their expectations.

In preparation for Evan’s second fight, Evan dedicated himself to his training. I was very proud of him but something about Evan was wrong. Evan came here to Indiana to do a guest appearance for a friend of ours show. He and I were in the backseat of our friend’s vehicle and it made me sad to look at him. He looked small sitting there and something was just out of place. The Evan that I knew, that I had met didn’t seem to be inside the person I was sitting next to now. I felt this urge that he needed to be taken care of and in all of the time we were friends I never felt that tug before. Later when he would lose the second fight and then find out about his medical condition I knew I had been right about what I felt that day. I now feel guilt because may be I should have tried to force him to take care of things before his next fight but the part of me that knows Evan knows I nor anyone else could make Evan do anything that wasn’t his idea. He thought he could cure it himself with something herbal he was taking even though he didn’t really know what it was. Evan was humble in a lot of ways but his ego was also very stubborn and many times it hurt him in the long run to be this way. You didn’t question his decisions or most people didn’t anyway without being cut out of his life. I questioned a lot of his decisions and this was one of them. He was angry with me for it but he knew I was sincere in my concern so he at least allowed me to put it out there that it might have been something that couldn’t be cured without medication.

Dan and I went to Evan’s fight against Kendall. He looked great and he sounded confident so my fears subsided or at least until he was in the cage. I have seen a lot of fights but by I had to force myself to watch this fight. We were in the front row just a few feet from him and I was watching my friend lose something he had fought so hard to win and I don’t mean once he was in the cage but his journey to get him in it. I was so proud of his heart. He took a beating and wasn’t going to give up but it was painful to watch. We were all together after his fight and he was trying to be gracious to everyone. He kept saying that he just didn’t have the energy to do what he needed to. He had worked his ass off for this and something kept him from doing what he needed to do. It was a hard loss but the gain was that he was finally willing to find out what was wrong…..and he did. It was a hard lesson but I was proud of him for learning it.

Evan moved to Oceanside and he was happy. I could tell it in his voice and he was working on getting healthy. He was even interested in a relationship for the first time in as long as I can remember him mentioning it. We talked a lot about my marriage and the struggles within it and what we did to overcome them and even why we wanted to bother to overcome them. He had seen this woman on tv and something about her struck him. He searched her out on the Internet and even sent me a video on her. He said wanted to get his life in order so he would have something to give someone and build a family. I often wonder if she received his email and if she did if she knew what had become of Evan. I have only told a few people about her but I want people to understand that when he went off into the desert he had plans for his future and it wasn’t a mission of death. I wanted to contact her myself just to see if she got his email but in my mind it was be a disservice to her because she missed out on knowing someone very special.

The camping trip. Our actual phone conversations were few and far between while he was preparing and we relied more on text messages. The night before he left he started talking about people and how he wanted to get away for awhile, get his head clear and come back refocused. He had said a lot of people annoy him and I said I had no idea how he stayed my friend as long as he had because I am annoying and in Evan’s humor he said “You are great in small doses” He was constantly teasing me and seeing if he could stir me up. He succeeded many times and we had our rounds….boy did we! I can honestly tell you that there were many times that I thought I had enough and was going to tell him to go to hell. He would be so difficult and I was get to frustrated with him and then he would send me some email or text about how he was an asshole and he wasn’t sorry for it but that he knew he was and thank you for putting up with him. UGH!! He had a knack for knowing just when I was going to throttle him and would completely take the fun out of it.

Our last phone conversation was a fluke. I had received a package back that he had sent out to one of the Team Tanner members and I knew he had left for his trip so I thought I would call and leave him a message. He answered my call and I don’t know which one of us was more shocked. He said he couldn’t believe his phone had signal where he was. We talked about the item and he said just to wait until he got back. We started talking about the trip and he began to tell me about the things he was going to do once he got back. He was ready to start the rest of his life. He mentioned going back to town the next day and we chatted on for a bit. My phone started to die and I would now give anything to have just plugged it in. At the end of our conversation a strange pull to tell him that I loved him happened but of course I didn’t because I knew the horrible teasing I would get for that. We got read yto say our good bye’s and he teased me that this may be the last time I ever talk to him. He was enjoying torturing me and I was like great now I will worry but the funny thing is that I wasn’t worried a bit….me the worrier!! I was the last person to talk to Evan alive.

The phone rang and rang and it was people who had heard Evan was missing and even the police. I thought people were over reacting. I knew he wanted to get away and I thought about how pissed or how amused he was going to be when he got back and heard of all of the commotion. I really didn’t worry at first. Finally I sent a text message and no response. His voicemail was full. I reassured all that called that he was fine and he would resurface at some point and make fun of all of us. I was talking to a very nice detective and I wish that I would have saved his phone number to thank him. He couldn’t tell me anything because I wasn’t family but he knew that I had been the last person to talk to Evan and I wasn’t sure how he knew that until he said he was sorry he couldn’t tell me anything until he spoke with a member of Evan’s family first. I knew it then and it felt like someone grabbed my heart and ripped it from my chest. I couldn’t speak and my reaction must have been so terrifying that the poor officer asked if I needed a suicide hotline number. He promised that he would call me back as soon as he could and he did. He spoke to Evan’s brother Jeff and he called me back but he knew he didn’t have to say anything except that he was sorry. He was on the phone with me when Evan’s friend Brent beeped in and he was going calling to tell me. The days that followed are a blur. All of us that really knew Evan weren’t really worried about him being in the desert and I think we were all in shock. I would jump every time my text message would go off(and a lot of you know how many I get in a day!) and before I would look I would pray that it was from him saying Gotcha! I wanted so badly for this to be some cruel joke he was playing on us. Evan’s death left a huge hole that can never be filled. My heart still aches every day and I still cry every single day because I miss him. I keep thinking as the days go by it will get better but somehow it seems to get harder. I have become friends with his brother Jeff and it has helped a lot. I am grateful for those as close to Evan as I was because we all seem to still be reeling from everything. GB, Ian and Alan and the Team Tanner members make the pain a little more bearable by being the wonderful people that they are. My husband has been more understanding than any man should ever be expected to be. I grieve the loss of another man and he sees my tears more often than not and he allows me the freedom to grieve without jealousy or resentment that they are for another man that wasn’t him. He understood that I loved Evan as my friend and because of that he loved Evan as his friend too. People often think I met Evan through Dan and in a way that is true but they did not actually meet in person until Evan’s comeback fight in Columbus. I hate that the one picture I have of them together is not a good picture and yet another regret that I didn’t take hundreds and hundreds of pictures.

The inspiration that I have gotten from Evan being in my life does not come from just Evan himself. He was a good friend to me and I know he would have done anything he could of to help me out if I would have needed it but it was the people who cared about him that was so incredible. By Evan allowing me to be a part of his life and a part of Team Tanner I got to witness some amazing stories of courage and strength not just from Evan and his blogs but from the people who wrote to us through Team Tanner. The fact that people believed in someone and was inspired to change their lives by reading about Evan’s struggles and challenges was a gift that is beyond anything anyone could ever begin to explain. People sent in their own stories of struggles and of how they beat their demons. People opened up their lives and showed us inside their weaknesses and that in itself takes enormous courage. I was disheartened and my faith weakened by people when they attacked him by showing his weaknesses but after he was gone the outpouring of grief by people restored a lot of it because then I knew so many people saw what I saw and believed as I believed. Evan’s death truly rocked people to their core and I know this because I was one of them. I know that there are many people out there still trying to find a way to come to terms with the fact that he is gone and I know this because I am one of them. I wish I had words to help heal not only myself but so many of you who feel the way I do. I have gotten to know many people who he was friends with and everyone knew a different Evan and everyone has a different Evan story. I believe that Evan’s message will live on in each of us and his stories will be lessons not just for us but for people who will be here well after we are gone. I know that my story will not inspire anyone but I thank you for allowing me to tell it. This is my Evan Tanner story about a man who was simply my friend and I loved him.

-Proud Member of Team Tanner

WAR TANNER

The Believe Tshirt


Shane's Evan story.

http://silverladder.com/blog/?p=20