The former opponent of Evander Holyfield and Lennox Lewis scored a brutal nine-second knockout victory over the former UFC heavyweight champion in his MMA debut.

Ray Mercer couldn’t have dreamed of a better professional MMA debut.

“Merciless” was an absolute beast in his prime and emerged from the talent-laden heavyweight boxing division of the 1990s with a world title.

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Along the way he faced Larry Holmes, Lennox Lewis and Evander Holyfield before suffering a knockout loss to “Dr Steelhammer” Wladimir Klitschko late in his career.

His moment of glory came in January 1991 when he crushed Francesco Damiani for the WBO heavyweight title – a belt he would defend later that year by knocking out Tommy Morrison in front of a capacity crowd at Atlantic City’s Convention Hall.

Mercer hung up his gloves in 2008 with a 36-7-1 record, but returned to action a year later to make his professional MMA debut against former UFC heavyweight champion Tim Sylvia in Birmingham, Alabama.

The boxing icon had competed in an exhibition MMA fight against popular street fighter Kimbo Slice in 2007, which he lost via guillotine choke, so he wasn’t expected to put up much of a fight against Sylvia.

However, the 48-year-old defied the odds by pulverising his seasoned opponent with a forehand inside the first nine seconds of their cross-match clash to close out his illustrious career in style.

Recalling his destructive stoppage during a podcast with The Mayweather Channel, Mercer said: “I didn’t know anything about him, my manager set up that fight and we trained for about two or three months and I just watched him fight a couple of times.

“I knew he was a really tough guy, I saw him break his arm (against Frank Mir) and he didn’t want to give up.

“When we went out for the press conference, we took him out to eat and I was getting drunk in front of him and everything.

“I smoked some weed and we pissed him off. He was walking around the hotel saying, ‘What’s up, old man?’

“And I said, ‘I was old, I wasn’t trained, and I was doing it for the money.’

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“That’s why he kicked me to see what I would do and that’s it.”

At his peak, Sylvia was one of the best heavyweights in UFC history.

During an impressive career in MMA’s premier promotion spanning from 2002 to 2008, the American slugger defeated the likes of Jeff Monson and Andrei Arlovski (twice), while he also had two separate reigns as UFC heavyweight champion.

However, by the time he met Mercer, Sylvia was a shadow of his former self.

“The Maine-iac” had stopped taking the sport seriously and let his weight balloon out of control.

He tipped the scales at 310.6 pounds for his fight against Mercer and paid the ultimate price.

Sylvia continued to compete in pro-MMA for four more years after that devastating loss, trading wins and losses with varying levels of opposition.

He stopped five-time World’s Strongest Man Mariusz Pudzianowski in 2010 before ending his career with a three-fight losing streak.

His final bow came in October 2013, when he was outclassed by Ruslan Magomedov over the distance in Moscow, Russia.

The 2.03 KO artist attempted to make a comeback in 2015 but was not medically cleared and as a result his fight with Juliano Coutinho was canceled.

Sylvia weighed 371 pounds at the time and her longtime manager, Monte Cox, claimed that an MRI before the fight showed concerning signs of blunt force trauma.

In 2023, he caused concern by signing up for a slap fight match.

Unfortunately, Sylvia suffered several hard knocks in her debut in the sport before eventually securing a knockout victory.

Sylvia won another slap fight by KO in June 2024.

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