We’re 11 weeks into 2019 and leading into the weekend I was feeling pleasantly surprised at how little bile I’d accumulated along the way. Jon Jones is back in the Octagon throwing leather and spinning s—t, and ostensibly keeping his self-destructive impulses in check outside of it. The Ultimate Fighting Championship’s transition to ESPN has been a refreshing and necessary change of scenery — with one or two caveats — and outside the Velasquez-Ngannou fight last month, the events have delivered. The UFC’s competitors — Bellator MMA, Professional Fighters League, One Championship, etc. — have been signing streaming deals and free agents, and the industry looks healthier than it has been since the Strikeforce days.
But then the afterglow of the Junior dos Santos-Derrick Lewis slugfest wore off, and Conor McGregor got arrested again. My bile came back, I dusted off the old op-ed-writing-quill, and here we are for another lighting round of spit-balling known as Counterpunch.
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Jacob Debets 