This was a good year for Joe Buck. Back in March, he moved from Fox Sports to ESPN, signing a contract that will eventually earn him $75m.
That's how highly Buck is valued for his work as a play by play announcer on Major League baseball and the NFL. Indeed, he has won several Sports Emmy awards over his career.
But Buck must cringe when reminded of a comment he made during coverage of Seattle Skyhawks v Green Bay Packers in 2015.
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Fox ran a few promos for an upcoming Conor McGregor fight on another of their channels before that game. And that moved Buck to declare that the Dubliner is ''the Irish Muhammad Ali''. That kind of hyperbole was why so many were wary of UFC, McGregor and a sport that is new and different.
It doesn't seem that long since we were being hammered over the head with repeated claims that the UFC is the future of sport.
But McGregor was its biggest ever star and, at one stage, he was picking fights with a bus rather than a man.
This week, he's plumbed even lower depths. Comedian PJ Gallagher made a mild joke about McGregor on Twitter.
McGregor's response couldn't have been more vile, bringing up Gallagher's mental health issues and his marriage.
Their online spat went viral and Paul McGrath - the most popular figure in the history of Irish sport - rowed in on Gallagher's side.
McGregor's response was to challenge both Gallagher and McGrath to a fight. McGrath is 63 years old, not far off pension age. Gallagher is 47. Brave man, McGregor...
On yet another rerun of Reeling in the Years on Tuesday evening, we were reminded of the noughties when so many lost the run of themselves.
There was the fad for going to New York to shop, and pretending you were saving money by doing so.
There was the mania for buying apartments in Bulgarian resorts that we couldn't even pronounce.
When the definitive history of the Celtic Tiger is written, it will be seen as a time of collective madness.
Many became obsessed with decking, or coffee, or skylights, or eircom shares.
There were books and TV programmes advising us how to spend our SSIAs - which we figured was free money from the government.
It was such a weird time that there was talk of Westlife being as big as The Beatles. Some who said that were even allowed to keep walking the streets.
Thing is, the decade that followed was as big a head scratcher because of The Adoration of The Notorious.
Cults are dangerous things. They blind you to uncomfortable realities. Steer you away from awkward situations. Elevate mere humans to God-like status.
Conor McGregor is many things. Athlete. Multi-millionaire. Showman. He's also a cult leader. Whether that was by accident or design is debatable.
But millions around the world bought into the Cult of Conor McGregor.
It was six years ago last month that he beat Jose Aldo to become a two weight UFC champion.
There were breathless claims that this made him the greatest Irish sportsperson of all time.
There were signs, though, that this chap was a loose cannon.
For a long time, the cult excused everything.
"I would invade his favela on horseback, and would kill anyone who wasn't fit to work...What I really want to do is to turn his favela into a Reebok sweatshop." Ah, Conor is just selling a fight.
"Smell of shite off your Da." He's the 21st century Oscar Wilde.
In a world where you can become a multi-millionaire by filming yourself playing video games on YouTube, McGregor was the poster boy.
You could be sure that Love Islanders - in between applying fake tan and waxing, and that's just the men - followed him on Instagram.
Those of us with grey in our beards scrambled frantically trying to get a grip on what was happening,
Reading up on the intricacies of rear naked choke-holds, doing our damnedest to figure out what 'ground and pound' actually means.
We needn't have bothered. Most have turned their back on the circus. McGregor makes headlines now for a spat with rapper Machine Gun Kelly, trying to fob his whiskey off to Johnny Depp, and claims that he's an Indian at heart.
When even that shtick ran out of steam, he resorted to picking fights with middle-aged ex-footballers and comedians.
Most yawn and move on. The madness is over. Thank your lucky stars.
To McGregor fans - and there were legions of them all over the world - what he said and did outside the Octagon didn't matter.
But the steady drip of stories about his behaviour have dented the allure.
Early last year, McGregor released a video of him wearing a million dollar watch.
In 2016, that Trumpian time, such a move would have been manna from heaven for his cult.
They'd have gloried in the excess but, in the time of Covid where so many were struggling, most saw it for what it was. Crass.
Dana White, the man behind the rise of the UFC, has now launched Power Slap.
This involves two 'athletes' facing each other, and taking turns slapping the other in the face.
Soon, we'll probably be told that this is a complex and mystical art.
We'll be told that, like MMA, it's another kind of 'human chess'.
McGregor, inevitably, has talked of giving it a go.
Ending up as a slapper might be just how this ludicrous story should end.
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