It’s damn tough to enjoy the rest of UFC Live: Hardy vs. Lytle when you’ve just been informed of the passing of Shawn Tompkins. There’s not much information out there, but it appears that Shawn Tompkins died in Canada at some point last night at the age of thirty-seven. Apparently to those close to him, his passing wasn’t that shocking, but for us in the MMA world — wow. Forensics have not been returned, which means that we’re essentially clueless as to how Shawn Tompkins died.
I met Tompkins for the first time at Strikeforce: Fedor vs. Rogers. As I struggled to find a chair in the media section for the weigh-ins, he actually gave up his seat just so that I could take pictures of Marloes Coenen with my unbelievably dinky iPhone 3G camera. That was the extent of my interaction with Shawn, but judging from that little morsel of humanity (and everything that is currently being said about him on Twitter), he was a noble guy. You will be missed Tompkins.
