Cue the Will Smith jokes: The much-maligned president of the UFC, Dana White, has the green light for a new venture — the Power Slap League.
Although much remains uncertain about the new league, slap fighting is pretty much what it sounds like: Two people face each other and take turns smacking one another on the side of the head with an open hand.
The Nevada State Athletic Commission last week voted in Las Vegas — a city known for carefully considered decisions — to oversee the slap-fighting league.
Photo: AFP
Videos this year from one competition, the Slap Fighting Championship at the Arnold Sports Festival in Columbus, Ohio, show some fairly brutal hand-to-face contact while the recipient simply stands there and takes it. Some blows lead to knockouts.
Seated on the sidelines was Arnold Schwarzenegger, the festival’s namesake.
“Thank God it wasn’t me that got slapped,” he said.
Photo: AFP
Hunter Campbell, the UFC’s chief business officer, said his team had spent a year working with commission officials to develop rules for the league built on those of mixed martial arts (MMA).
“It made all the sense in the world to go toward regulation before the sport’s commencing, for all the obvious reasons — No 1, the health and safety of the competitors,” he told ESPN.
Safety rules are to include requirements for protective gear, such as mouthguards and earplugs, and regulations on which parts of a face can be slapped. Campbell and officials also called for blood testing, brain scans and on-site medical staff.
However, even MMA enthusiasts appear to have serious reservations.
“It’s all offense and no defense,” wrote Trent Reinsmith at the UFC news site Bloody Elbow. “It’s common to see competitors badly concussed or fall completely unconscious from the blows.”
On his blog on Substack, the Fighting Life, journalist Ben Fowlkes described the sport as “what you’d get if you let 13-year-old boys invent a new sport.”
On Twitter, Luke Thomas, a combat sports analyst for CBS, also criticized the endeavor.
“If boxing is to hit and not be hit, slap fighting is kinda the opposite where getting hit is specifically arranged and done without impediment. Nevada’s commission is pretty shameless,” he wrote.
“It might as well be kicking each other in the nuts,” USA Today’s Simon Samano wrote online.
Slap fighting has existed in various forms for years. It was mocked on Fox Sports as far back as the early 2000s, but it grew in popularity in the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, with help from viral videos.
In October last year, a Polish competitor, Artur “Walu” Walczak, was knocked out several times at an event and died the following month in the hospital after being put in a medically induced coma, Reinsmith said.
White has also been the subject of numerous controversies. He has told fighters concerned with UFC pay to “shut up and fight” and backed the organization’s decision to feature the ex-NFL player Greg Hardy, who was convicted of domestic abuse, although the charges were expunged after an appeal.
White is an ardent supporter of former US president Donald Trump and spoke at the 2016 Republican national convention.
Campbell said the Power Slap League hopes to have a “major broadcast partner” by year’s end.
It has not yet been decided when the slapping will begin.
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