Scott Christ at BadLeftHook sums up what the fight truly meant:
If anyone rational wants to know my opinion of what this means in the great pretend war between MMA and boxing, it means absolutely nothing. Listen, I’ve never met Tim Sylvia. I genuinely assume he’s a nice guy. But I have no idea what kind of mindset he has right now other than a guess that it’s not very good. He came in over 300 pounds for this fight, which means he didn’t train and didn’t take this seriously, which is stupid. I know we all think the fight was a joke — and it was, it should not have happened — but he was going in there to do a job, a dangerous job, and he didn’t prepare. His career is completely in shambles now.
I couldn’t agree more with the rest of Scott’s feelings on the fight which are basically that A) this would be a nice sendoff for Ray (as long as he doesn’t decide this means he has a career left ahead of him) and B) that Sylvia needs to get his head on right and maybe he can still turn his career back into something real going forward.
Beyond the personal meaning for both men, there really isn’t anything more to read into this fight other than that boxers have a natural chance in any fight based on the fact that they’re able to land one punch with small gloves and knock someone out. This is a true case of “every fight starts on the feet” actually meaning something.
— photo via Sherdog.com