Sports
Slap fighting: Is it the next big sport or just stupid?
The competitors stand rigidly upright with their hands behind their backs, waiting to absorb a brutal slap to the face.
When the open-handed blow is delivered, there’s a sharp sound and the reaction can be dramatic. Some fighters barely move, while others stumble backward or fall to the floor. Some are knocked out.
It’s a craze that started in Eastern Europe, with a few viral breakout stars finding fame on YouTube.
Now UFC President Dana White is selling slap fighting in America as the next big thing in combat sports, putting his money and the resources of one of the world’s foremost mixed martial arts organisations behind the Power Slap League.
“It’s a home run,” said White, who is among several UFC officials involved in the league.
Some slap-fighting beatdowns have gone viral, including a video from eastern Europe showing a man who continues to compete even as half of his face swells to seemingly twice its size. Such exposure has led to questions about the safety of slap fighting, particularly the risk of chronic traumatic encephalopathy, or CTE, a degenerative brain disease believed to be caused by repeated blows to the head.
In the US, the Nevada Athletic Commission has sanctioned the league for competitions in Las Vegas. A former chairman of the commission, which regulates combat sports in Nevada, says approving the league was a mistake.
Chris Nowinski, cofounder and CEO of the Concussion Legacy Foundation, agrees, calling slap fighting “one of the stupidest things you can do.”
“They’re trying to dress up a really stupid activity to try to make money,” Nowinski said.
White and the competitors remain unfazed, comparing commentary on slapping to the negative reaction the UFC faced in its infancy more than 20 years ago.
“I think it’s definitely overblown with the topics of CTE and the damage that we’re taking,” said Ryan Phillips, a Power Slap League fighter. “I think a lot of people still just don’t understand that it’s still a slap.”
White said he believes slap fighting will follow a similar trajectory to mixed martial arts, which the late Senator John McCain referred to as “human cockfighting” in 1996, when the UFC didn’t have weight classes or many rules. McCain’s criticism helped force the organization to become more structured, leading to its widespread acceptance.
White said the ratings of the TBS reality show “Power Slap: Road to the Title” bear out the early popularity of what to many is still a curiosity.
White said he realized there could be a market for the sport in the US when he clocked the millions of YouTube views of slap fighting videos from eastern Europe in 2017 and 2018. The videos were often poorly produced, the slap matches unregulated.
White became convinced that fights with written rules and shot with professional video equipment could convert many internet viewers into dedicated, paying fans.
The Nevada commission gave slap fighting some much needed legitimacy when it unanimously sanctioned the sport in October and a month later awarded White a license to promote it.
But White’s enterprise was hampered when he was captured on video slapping his wife on New Year’s Eve. White apologised, but has acknowledged it damaged efforts to get the league off the ground.
But White is charging ahead. Three qualifying events have taken place at the UFC Apex in Las Vegas, ahead of the 11 March telecast on the streaming platform Rumble in which champions will be crowned in four weight classes.
How slap fights work
Power Slap fights are typically three to five rounds. The fighters take turns hitting each other in the face with an open hand, and those on the receiving end stand with their hands behind their backs. A fighter has up to 60 seconds to recover and respond after receiving a blow. Fighters can earn up to 10 points based on the effectiveness of the slap and the defender’s reaction.
Fights can end in a decision, knockout, technical knockout or disqualification, such as for an illegal slap. All slaps are subject to video review. Each event has two referees and three judges.
Also present are a supervising doctor and a physician or physician’s assistant, plus three EMTs and three ambulances. White has touted the safety record of the UFC, but has not talked specifically about injuries in the Power Slap League.
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Tammy Abraham punished Inter again in the derby first leg of the Coppa Italia semifinal. After the decisive goal in Riyad with which he gave the Super Cup to the Rossoneri, the English striker found the goal of the momentary lead with the Nerazzurri, who tied the score with Calhanoglu.
“I am really happy for the goal for me and for the team– Abraham said in the press conference. “Then we didn’t win, so we are not happy and we have to fight for the next game, being positive, knowing that we are a good team”.
Then the’ex-Roma spoke about his future: “I do not know my future now. Milan is a great club, very passionate. I want to fight until the end for this club. Staying does not depend only on me”.
“It is a difficult season for everyone. We have other games though, every game is a final. There are always ups and downs. I would have liked to score more but the season is not over. There are 11 games to fight for. We want to play in Europe. We want to try to win the Italian Cup” Abraham concluded.
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Lewis Hamilton spoke at a press conference on the eve of the Japanese Grand Prix, scheduled for the weekend. “I heard some people say some nonsense – he began – like I would be losing faith in the team. I can say I believe 100% in this team, obviously there was a huge hype at the beginning of the year, probably a lot of people expected us to win right away, starting from the first race, but that was not what I expected.”
“I’m coming into a new culture, a new team, and it’s going to take time – added the British driver. “I’ve spent the last couple of months just observing how the team works compared to the other two I’ve worked in before. During the past week I have been able to take notes and point out areas where I think we can improve, and this process will continue throughout the year as we learn more and more from each other”.
Then he came back to the disqualification in China: “In general during a race you always avoid areas of the asphalt where there are bumps, in Shanghai at the exit of turn 13 the bottom was not touching the asphalt, there was not even rebound or anything like that, so I had no warning. Regarding disqualifications, we all know that all these single-seaters are set to the limit in every parameter, personally I didn”t feel any frustration when I was made aware of it. It is what it is”.
“We immediately looked ahead, I was in Maranello on Wednesday and learned a lot. I would say the most impressive thing was seeing how the team worked, how they processed the data and how we worked ahead of this weekend, that is the most important thing” Hamilton concluded.
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Riccardo Piatti, former coach of Jannik Sinner, gave a lengthy interview to Corriere della Sera in which he spoke about his former pupil with whom he parted ways more than three years ago: “When I finished with Jannik I admit I had a few months of daze, then I went toward what I like: teaching tennis. The Piatti Center is not a supermarket: you go through a growth process here. I did that myself. It was a mental click, priorities changed but tennis remains at the top of my thoughts. Now I chase kids” dreams.
“Everyone remembers the match with Daniel, in Melbourne, in January 2022, when he said: ‘be calm, ca**o’ – continued the Italian coach -. He was mad at me for court stuff, it had happened before: it is normal dynamic between coach and player. That is not the problem. I always wanted Jannik to become independent, I knew he would leave one day. But with him I had to be the strict, sometimes rigid coach: that was my role. Ljubicic scolds me that I used to tell him: you decide, Ivan, but then you do as I say. For Jannik, this penalty, at one point, was too much to handle”.
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Then he mentioned a few names for the post-Darren Cahill, who will leave the’Alto Adige at the end of the season: “Carlos Moya, who I had already considered. He has been No. 1, he knows the circuit. Humanly he is a very good person, like Darren. Renzo Furlan, now that he stopped with Paolini, is free. Ljubicic is very good. Or Becker, whom we had contacted; however, working with Boris is more complicated. The names are these”.
Closing on the return of the world number one, expected at the Internazionali d’Italia: “He will be strong right away. I really believe he can make the Grand Slam this year. The suspension has extended his life: he will arrive at the end of the season fresh. You play too much, mentally you never stop. He will come back energized and motivated. He always has been. In the pandemic many took advantage of it by not training, Gasquet in the doping stop gained eight pounds, Jannik did not lose a day. He knows perfectly well where he wants to go”.
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