The SAN DIEGO UNION-TRIBUNE reports on the bizarre end to the life of a unique athlete: A body found in the desert near the Palo Verde mountains is believed to be former UFC middleweight champion Evan Tanner, who had gone out alone as way to “cleanse” himself.

MMA WEEKLY says that authorities believe that he set out on foot in 115-degree heat after his motorcycle ran out of gas and eventually succumbed to the heat. Tanner was 37.

According to Douglas Vincitorio, a member of his management team, this apparently wasn’t the first time Tanner had gone out into the wild to try and get his head on straight:

“He went out to the desert to do a ‘cleansing’ as he called it. Kind of like Survivorman.”

If only he had someone like Dwight Schrute there to watch over him, things might have turned out differently. What also might have helped: bringing enough water and other basic equipment. As Tanner himself wrote in an eerily-prophetic blog entry at the SPIKE TV site, he was aware of the dangers of venturing into the desert with minimal equipment:

Being a minimalist by nature, wanting to carry only the essentials, and being extremely particular, it has been a little difficult to find just the right equipment. 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.

As Kevin Iole noted in his YAHOO! SPORTS column today, Tanner was one of the most beloved figures in MMA by fans and people inside the sport precisely because he marched to his own beat. He was a former Texas wrestling champ who decided to try MMA on whim after watching a fight as a fan. He loved reading, often sleeping on the floor of hishome with books instead of on his bed. As his manager John Hayner told CAGE POTATO, Tanner was a minimalist in the truest sense of the word:

“Here was a famous UFC fighter who didn’t have enough food to eat at times. I’d call him just to make sure he had food in his fridge, but he never let it get him down. Starting over was kind of a theme in his life. He hardly ever lived in the same place more than six months,” Hayner said. “He moved out to Vegas and then found it too shallow for him, so he moved out to Oceanside and had a great place, he was learning to surf, and he was really enjoying his day-to-day life.”