Where does he get the hat anyway? It appeared, and I thought nothing of it. I went back, and found that on the morning of the fight, he just casually flips it on, and is considerably more hard-ass from that point on, and does not seem to have taken it off yet. I think it would be incredibly easy for Onstad to attribute Ray's abilities / attitude to the hat, and would just plop him back in his old self right after this. I wouldn't be very surprised at all, and I really don't see this having much of an impact, except for maybe scattered references later.
On a side note, I find it amusing that people here have commented about how characters such as Nice Pete might show up in the GOF, and then we are given a blog entry that shows that such characters are quite certainly not at the acres. I guess it's not paranoia that makes people here think Chris might be visiting...