I (once) wrote a Sports Illustrated opinion article years ago (similar situation to yours: made a comment on twitter to one of the popular talking heads, talking head took notice and replied, SI took notice, asked me to write something), your experience matched mine from the editing and review standpoint.

At first sitting back and reading the suggested edits and changes in place I had a similar first reaction as you did, but after doing the "walk away, do something else and come back to your writing later" thing, I found the opinion was still there though much less verbose.

Share that to say, the editorial process itself, even for opinion pieces-is rather....well... opinionated.