The Fall of a Champion: Ray Mercer Stuns MMA World
In an act overshadowed by UFC 99, Tim Sylvia "battled" 48-year-old former boxing champion Ray Mercer. "Bragging Rights" as it was called was originally Sylvia's first attempt at beginning a boxing career before a boxing commission stepped in.
The ABC sited age and previous fight history as reasons why the "boxing match" was cancelled.
The match was changed at the last minute, to one featuring MMA rules to escape the ABC's prior ruling (a rematch was also negotiated).
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You see they, like everyone else in the converted basketball gym were expecting one thing. What they got was something sad, pathetic, and impossibly hilarious.
As the bell rang the two fighters closed the distance, seven seconds later a squatting overhand right, reduced the former two time UFC Heavyweight champion to an unconscious heap in the center of the cage.
Ray Mercer, the man who was submitted by the awesome power of Kimbo Slice, pulls off possibly the greatest upset in MMA history. “Everything was against me …. I whooped that #$$.” he said.
It seems like yesterday Tim Sylvia, was standing over Andrei Arlovski, whom he had just TKO'd, at the precipice of his sport. He had regained his lost Heavyweight belt, avenged his defeat to Arlovski at UFC 51.
That was a mere three years ago. Now he's a unified embarrassment, a fighter who has battled weight problems his whole career, once using a ban substance to achieve it, weighed in at a staggering 310lbs.
The questions that this fight promised to answer seem irrelevant now, how could "The MAINEiac" ever live this one down? How can he ever be remembered as anything but a joke, something to be ridiculed in the annuals of MMA history? How does he compose himself to continue his Affliction career?
Does he bother with the rematch already agreed to? How good was the UFC and the fighters in its Heavyweight Division?
It seems this fight was more questions than it ever could be answers. One that will be remembered forever to be bantered around on internet chat rooms. Just like Two Girls One Cup...Right where it belongs.
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