Evan Tanner, a former UFC middleweight champion, went missing early this month in the California desert and was found dead at the age of 37. Tanner was one of the most interesting characters in mixed martial arts for a lot of reasons, including the fact that he had a blog.

Now we learn that Tanner had written -- but not posted -- a blog post just before he died.

The post is now up at Spike.com:

It's Tuesday night. Tomorrow I go out into the desert. It has taken over a month to get all the gear together. The preparation for this adventure took far longer than I had expected. I've never done this before, so I took my time reading books, studying the land, and researching gear. A few weeks of solitude in the deep desert, and then back to civilization, and back to training.

Tanner was found by an Imperial County Sheriff's Department Deputy after he had been reported missing by friends who said he hadn't answered their text messages. Authorities say he died of heat exposure.