Once I Was a Champion Page #3

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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 AT&T, 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

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