RIP Abbey Subhan: My wingman, my confidant, my friend

This Christmas, I lost one of my best friends, but in truth, Abbey Subhan was so much more than that. He was my confidant, my personal cheerleader, and my biggest advocate in this crazy MMA space.

I called him my wingman. He called me his "road wife" – a nod to the hours spent on the road together covering mixed martial arts.

We first met properly in Krakow, Poland back in April 2015, and in the decade since, we've travelled the world together covering this crazy sport during the boom period for the UFC. While we often covered the events for different outlets, we still worked in tandem, and were side by side at press conferences, media scrums and weigh-ins.

When we both ended up working together at MMA Junkie/USA Today and started covering European shows together, it was what we'd both hoped for. We were a great team together, and we had an absolute blast on the road. Nobody had more fun than we did on our European travels, but nobody worked harder, too.

More often than not, we were the first to show up, and the last ones to leave. And the work carried on when we got back to the hotel or AirBnB. They were long, at times arduous work days, but to be honest, they never really felt like work. Those were fun times, and the memories of the time spent on the road with Abbey will never leave me.

When I reluctantly departed Junkie for a full-time job I couldn't afford to turn down at the time, the pair of us vowed that we'd work together under the same banner again one day. We told ourselves we were playing the long game, confident that things would eventually come back around and we'd get to do what we love as a team again. Abbey always insisted that if we manifested it enough, it would eventually become a reality. Sadly, it never quite happened, but even though we weren't working for the same outlet, we still ran fight weeks together as a duo, and always had each other's backs.

The last time I saw Abbey, I was waving to him from a Northern Line tube train after a day watching PROGRESS Wrestling with him and my daughter in London. It was his first time there, and he was instantly hooked. We had already planned to go to a host of other PROGRESS shows in Camden this coming year.

There were other plans, too. We were already making early preparations for our annual fight week at UFC London in March, and had started talking about getting over to New York for the UFC's next Madison Square Garden show in October or November. Away from work, Abbey asked me if I would be his Best Man – it would have been an absolute honour to have done so.

My heart goes out to his family, and to his friends, so many of whom he met along the way during his time coveringMMA. There's not a single person I can think of who ever had a bad word to say about Abbey, and we will all miss him dearly.

It's going to take a long time to process this – Abbey was a one-of-one human being. If you knew him, you already knew that. I am so luck to count myself among those who did know him, and our friendship will remain with me forever.

RIP, Abbey. Rest easy, my friend.