Historian Elliot J. Gorn, writing in the 1980s, states that although Hyer broke his arm, Beasley had been badly beaten, so after mutual friends intervened it was declared a draw. Gorn also states that the match was not actually the first ring fight in America, or the first open to the public, but that its "significance lay in the perception that it was a historic event worth recording, in its being the earliest American fight kept alive as living memory of a heroic past. When men gathered at New York's Empire Club decades later, they recounted this battle time and again.... Hyer and Beasley were important because they were remembered as founding fathers."Gorn, Elliot, J. The Manly Art: Bare-Knuckle Prize Fighting in America (1986)(updated 2010, )Mee, Bob. Bare fists: the history of bare-knuckle prize-fighting, p.129-30 (2001) () (stating that it is "stretching the truth" to call it the first American championship fight)
