If you have followed my column for the last few years, let me first applaud you for your excellent taste. Moving on, you may be familiar with one of the reasons why I gravitate to this sport. I’ve often said that my fascination with MMA — beyond its obvious and immediate thrills — is that fighting is a pure distillation of life. Sometimes the villains win. Sometimes bad things happen to good people. Feel-good endings are rare.
Enter Sean O’Connell. Two nights after Penn was submitted, O’Connell became the first light heavyweight champion of the Professional Fighters League. It was by far the biggest accomplishment of his career in the cage, and it was also his final one; he retired after the fight…