Suspect bent sway bar?

I was changing my failing sway bar links, and when I changed the second one on the passenger side, I had an anomaly that was different from the driver's side link. Firstly, I noticed that when I was unscrewing the nut on the top one that there seemed to be pressure on the bolt and it was being pushed upwards, and the same thing happened with the bottom bolt to the extent that the bottom link fell apart, with the ball popping out of it's socket. I had to hammer out the link bolts and as I did the sway bar bounced up, leaving a too small of gap for the new link to fit. I had to use a large prybar to bend the sway bar down far enough for the link to fit. I suspect that the bar is bent because also I changed the sway bar bushings a little while back and that passenger side one is already reamed out. I'm suspecting furthermore that the bent sway bar will wear out that new sway bar link I put in fairly quickly because of the excessive pressure on the link pushing the upper bolt upwards and the bottom bolt downwards. I know that it is a fairly rare thing to happen to spring steel, perhaps the previous owner got into a serious accident with it and failed to report that to me for whatever reason. Does what I describe sound like a correct assessment?