match in Puerto Rico. In recent years, long after anyone took it seriously and it was clearly all in fun, people like Mike Tyson, Evander Holyfield and Ricky Hatton messed around on WWE shows.

In the few legitimate fights, the results were almost predetermined, in the sense the rules made the outcome obvious. Frank Gotch was in many ways the first celebrity pro wrestler, who, as world champion, was viewed as legitimate in his day. He used a pseudonym, Frank Kennedy, and lost a boxing match to Frank Slavin in 1901 in The Yukon Territory. There was also the brutal 1940 bout where an aging Dempsey destroyed Cowboy Luttrell under boxing rules.

In a 1935 bout, wrestling star Ray Steele battled boxer Kingfish Levinsky in St. Louis, under mixed rules,and it only lasted 35 seconds with Steele winning. While it took longer, in a 1963 mixed match, wrestler/judoka Gene LeBell defeated boxer Milo Savage. Pro wrestler Kiyoshi Tamura, who later had an MMA career that included wins over Kazushi Sakuraba, Pat Miletich, Renzo Gracie and Maurice Smith and a draw with Frank Shamrock when Shamrock was UFC champion, finished past-his-prime boxing champion Matthew Saad Muhammad in 34 seconds in 1992.

Once MMA got established, a past-his-prime Ray Mercer lost to Kimbo Slice but later knocked out former UFC heavyweight champion Tim Sylvia in nine seconds. That’s really the only high-profile case where a boxing champion defeated an MMA champion under MMA rules.

Pride heavyweight Kazuyuki Fujita choked out former cruiserweight champion boxer Imamu Mayfield in 2003 with rules that