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By Wade Keller, Torch editor Our online poll this week regarding Tim Sylvia's embarrassing loss to Ray Mercy indicates many MMATorch readers think Sylvia was never a legit top MMA fighter, so his loss means little in the big picture. I tend to agree with the 35 percent who voted for that option. You can't take Sylvia's wins away from him because his competition was any more than you can take away Fedor's wins because a lot of his competition was weak (including Sylvia and, increasing evidence suggests, Andre Arlovski).
However, even if Sylvia was never that good, I think it's a blow to the credibility of MMA in the sense that he was a headlining champion of the top MMA group and did face some good competition, including going the distance against Randy Couture in his prime at UFC 68. So until a legit MMA fighter beats a legit pro boxer, this will be a fight MMA skeptics and boxing fanatics can point to and laugh. Twenty percent in our poll believe Silva's loss is a blow to MMA's rep.
As if MMA fans needed it, it's one more reason to dislike Sylvia. In fact, 22 percent of the respondents dislike Sylvia more than they're protective of MMA's reputation, saying no matter how it reflects on MMA, they're happy he went down. That doesn't surprise me, and his loss does pretty assure he's had his last big payday - at least for a while. Can he ever redeem himself, and under what circumstances could he be given a chance?
There are 15 percent who believe the results are irrelevant given the circumstances and they barely care. The circumstances were odd, with changing rules at the last second, but I'm more apt to agree more with the eight percent who said it was a "fluke loss" for Sylvia who could have done better with a different strategy. Why did he choose to box a boxer? His no. 1 goal should have been avoid getting punches. He treated the fight like a sparring session where Ray Mercer was going to let him warm up for a round before they got serious. I do think in a rematch he would do better because, well, how could he not have learned a lesson from that debacle. It's not as if he'd necessarily lose ten out of ten fights. But he'd lose ten out of ten using that strategy, but if he got Mercer on the mat, who knows what would have happened.
If you haven't voted yet or want to look closer at the results, check out our MMATorch Poll Page
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Jamie Penick, editor-in-chief
(mmatorcheditor@gmail.com)
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