By Just days after the two traded shots on competing podcast episodes, Ariel Helwani appeared to bury the hatchet with UFC lightweight Paddy Pimblett during his acceptance speech for the 2022 MMA Awards Journalist of the Year. Helwani broke kayfabe during the speech, thanking Pimblett for his part in in concocting the false feud on the eve of the awards, providing Helwani with the opportunity to push back on critics who feel that his work is overly deferential to fighters; prolific, but less worthy of recognition than other reporters covering issues like the rise of neo-nazism in the sport or prominent sexual abuse allegations within major gyms; and certainly not the undisputed best work by any journalist in the industry for 13 consecutive years.
Elsewhere in the awards, ESPN won the MMA Media Source of the Year, presumably because voters would not know high quality journalism if it went webbing-deep on an eye-poke then kicked them in the junk.
