Tony Blauer Tells Evan Tanner-Randy Couture Story

  • Wednesday, October 14th, 2009 at 5:15 am by Danny Acosta

In the past few years, Tony Blauer’s High Gear training equipment has made its way into mixed martial arts more and more. But with the life-long martial artist having sat ringside at UFC 1 on Nov. 12, 1993 to cover the flagship show for three different magazines, his involvement is more than just a quick play for a buck. He’s worked with and geared up some of the sport’s best fighters and its most memorable combatants.

“The first MMA guy to buy this was Evan Tanner,” he said, noting Tanner was self-training at the time and bought the product with his own dime on his own time. Blauer’s assistant, a die-hard fan who had surely been watching the Texan fight scene or the famed Pancrase Neo-Blood tournament, rushed to tell Blauer “Evan Tanner just called and bought two high gear suits!”

Blauer replied, ‘Who’s Evan Tanner?’”

Years later, Blauer was meeting with Randy Couture, explaining the custom built fiber glass and smart foam technology of his gear alllows for knees and elbows to be thrown without cutting or breaking a fighter during training. Couture started to light up like a “kid at Christmas,” imploring Blauer to stop with the talking and start with the demonstration. Blauer showed Couture the gear and the legendary fighter’s face looked like the kid who got socks instead of a BB gun.

“That’s your gear?” said Couture. “I’m going, aw fuck he hates it!” thought Blauer.

Couture said, “Oh man, I’ve been using that for a couple of years now, Evan Tanner started training with me and we used the stuff up. I love it.”

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