Power Slap

[GeneChing]

Thought we already had a thread devoted to slap fighting but I couldn't find it.

American neuroscientist and concussion expert slammed slap fighting, just as the brutal sport makes inroads in the US
Alan Dawson Jan 18, 2023, 9:49 AM


Slap fighter Sorin Comsa was left disfigured after a recent match. Photo by RXF

Concussion Legacy Foundation CEO Chris Nowinski slammed slap fighting as the brutal sport makes inroads in the US.
Footage of a slap event went viral this week when one competitor's face appeared disfigured.
A new slap fighting venture, backed by UFC boss Dana White, airs for the first time Wednesday.


Neuroscientist and concussion expert Chris Nowinski slammed slap fighting, just as the brutal sport makes inroads in the United States.

An event held on Monday attracted the attention of the internet as one participant's face looked disfigured after absorbing a few strikes.

Footage from the show, which took place in Romania, made for uncomfortable viewing, as Sorin Comsa had chalk and blood over the left side of his face.

His cheek was swollen; his lip sagged on the left side; and his face seemed unrecognizable from how he normally appeared.

Nowinski, a former pro wrestler with WWE and co-founder of the Concussion Legacy Foundation, commented on the clip.

"I believe adults can choose to do dangerous jobs if they understand the risks and reasonable efforts are made to protect them," the 44-year-old tweeted.

"But head hits with no defense is just sad. It reminds us that people who don't take the risks often exploit those who do."


Nowinski's criticism comes on the eve of a big American slap event

Dana White, the brains behind Power Slap. Photo by UFC
Reality TV show Power Slap, a brainchild of UFC boss Dana White, makes its debut Wednesday on TBS.

The pre-recorded program follows various slap fighters as they hope to leave an impression on executives and fans, vying for prominent rankings, before live event title shots later in the year.

Insider understands that live events are expected to take place as soon as March, and will be held at the UFC's TV studio, Apex, in Las Vegas.

Power Slap is not without controversy.

The show was originally due to air January 11; however, the premiere was delayed a week because White had media commitments that were ultimately canceled in the aftermath of a now-infamous New Year's Eve altercation between White and his wife, Anne White, who were seen on video slapping each other at a nightclub in Mexico.

"There's no defense for this," White told reporters last Wednesday at a press conference in Las Vegas.

"All the criticism that I have received this week and in the future is 100% warranted."

'You don't ever bounce back from this'

Dana White and Anne White slapped each other on video. Photos by TMZ Sports
Insider reminded White about a comment he made back in 2014 in response to seeing video of former NFL running back Ray Rice knocking out his fiancée — "You don't bounce back from putting your hands on a woman," he said then — and asked how he might bounce back from this.

"You don't," White told us. "You don't ever bounce back from this. For the rest of my life, however long that is, people are going to label me that. I did it."

White said it's something he "has to deal with and live with" forever.

Power-Slap
Dana-White

[GeneChing]

SPORTS MIXED MARTIAL ARTS
Is slap fighting the next big thing or unsporting stupidity?

Credit: Power Slap

By The Associated Press
Updated March 8, 2023 9:49 am
LAS VEGAS — 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 report and the reaction can be dramatic. Some fighters barely move, while others stumble backward or fall to the floor. Some are knocked out.

UFC President Dana White is selling slap fighting as the next big thing in combat sports, putting his money and the resources of one of the world's foremost mixed martial arts organizations behind the Power Slap League. The Nevada Athletic Commission has sanctioned the league for competitions in Las Vegas.

"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. 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.”

“There’s nothing fun, there’s nothing interesting and there’s nothing sporting,” Nowinski said. “They’re trying to dress up a really stupid activity to try to make money.”

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.”

Concerns about concussions leading to CTE, which can cause violent mood swings, depression and memory loss, aren’t confined to combat sports. The disease has shown up in the brains of former rugby players, and the NFL and college football have taken steps to cut down on blows to the head by changing rules regarding tackling and other hits. CTE can only be detected during an autopsy.

Despite the naysayers, White said he believes slap fighting will follow a similar trajectory to mixed martial arts, which the late Sen. 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 U.S. 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 apologized, but has acknowledged it damaged efforts to get the league off the ground. White is no newcomer to controversy: Former UFC fighters Kajan Johnson and Clarence Dollaway filed a lawsuit in 2021 against Endeavor, the organization’s parent company, alleging that UFC takes an inordinate share of the profits.

But White is charging ahead.

Three qualifying events have taken place at the UFC Apex in Las Vegas, ahead of the March 11 telecast on the streaming platform Rumble in which champions will be crowned in four weight classes.

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.

White says slap fighting is safer than boxing or mixed martial arts because each contestant usually takes only three blows per bout. In boxing, White said, that number could be 400 or more, and that doesn’t include the shots taken during sparring. There is no sparring in slap fighting, he noted.

Nowinski of the concussion foundation said while there may be no sparring in practice sessions, that doesn’t mean it doesn’t happen elsewhere. He said comparing boxing to power slapping is misleading because slap fighters take a full blow each time.

"You can slip (boxing) punches,” Nowinski said. But in slap fighting “you’re taking out everything that’s interesting to watch and everything sporting (from boxing) and just doing the brain damage part.”

Nowinski said slap fighters don’t make enough money to justify the risk. The Power Slap League wouldn’t disclose how much it pays fighters, but said in a statement that participants are compensated for every match and can also earn "appearance fees” and “additional discretionary bonuses.”

Stephen J. Cloobeck, who was chairman of the state commission when it sanctioned slap fighting, said White and former UFC CEO Lorenzo Fertitta sold him on the legitimacy of the sport.

“I made a mistake,” Cloobeck said. “I'm not happy about it."

The commission recently approved amended rules to better define what constitutes a legal slap in an effort to minimize serious injuries.

“The No. 1 thing is the health and safety of the fighter,” commission Chairman Anthony Marnell III said at a Feb 15 meeting. “Always has been, always will be."

But he went on to say: “It seems like there is a market for this, whether you like it or not.”

Phillips, the slap fighter, said participants can defend themselves without losing points, such as rolling away before the hand makes impact.

And the fighters know if they lose the coin toss and get slapped first, it will hurt.

“I know what’s coming,” fighter Vernon Cathey said. “I’m tensing up. There’s a lot of stuff I can do to protect myself.”

After watching Physical 100, I'd love to see a Korean version of this competition. They're so polite on P100...

[wuxiaman]

After watching Physical 100, I'd love to see a Korean version of this competition. They're so polite on P100...

Being polite on an alternative to Power Slap would get some initial attention for sure. Not sure if that would sustain it long term

[GeneChing]

Being polite on an alternative to Power Slap would get some initial attention for sure. Not sure if that would sustain it long term

Yeah, I know. It'd be a funny experiment however. I can just imagine the bowing and apologies between competitors as they smack the crap out of each other.

[GeneChing]

In Las Vegas, a Violent Sport Sparks Controversy
The team behind the Ultimate Fighting Championship is betting big on Power Slap, a new and extremely dangerous competition with many detractors.


A contestant who goes by the name Da Crazy Hawaiian receiving a blow from Danie (Pitbull) van Heerden.Credit...

By Calum Marsh Photographs by Daniel Dorsa
Calum Marsh covers extreme sports and traveled to Las Vegas for the eighth Power Slap event.

Published July 7, 2024
Updated July 10, 2024

When the meaty palm of Vasil Kamotskii, a 360-pound, 34-year-old pig farmer from Siberia known as Dumpling, struck the tender cheek of the man who faced him, it sounded like a thunderclap. Dumpling didn’t appear to expend much effort — he swung lazily, the way you might bat a fly. But it was enough to send his opponent, Kamil Marusarz, a 26-year-old from Orland Park, Ill., toppling to the ground.

Referees and the medical staff onstage at the Cobalt Ballroom at the Fontainebleau Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas late last month rushed to check on Mr. Marusarz. Any hesitation in the cheering and applause from the 3,500-person crowd was alleviated when someone with a clear view of the ring yelled out that Mr. Marusarz was still breathing. The atmosphere had the boozy jocularity of a bachelor party.

Dumpling raised a fist, grinning in triumph as the announcer declared him the victor. Mr. Marusarz remained unmoving on the floor. The whole fight, if you can call it as much, lasted about 30 seconds. Most fans agreed that it was the highlight of the evening’s eight-bouts event, in which one pair of competitors after another stood their ground and exchanged earsplitting slaps.

The atmosphere inside the Cobalt Ballroom at the Fontainebleau Hotel had the boozy jocularity of a bachelor party.
Dumpling has been slap fighting in his native Russia for many years — in fact, he is considered one of the forefathers of this unlikely pastime, helping to popularize it with viral highlight videos on YouTube — but this was his first time participating in Power Slap, the big-money slap-fighting league created by the U.F.C. president Dana White. Mr. White was inspired to found the league after happening upon Dumpling’s videos in 2021. Impressed by the attention-grabbing conceit, he wanted to see what would happen if the sport were “done the right way,” which is to say by him.

“The answer is seven billion views in 17 months, that’s the answer,” Mr. White, 54, said in a recent interview, referring to a statistic he often mentions about the Power Slap league’s total number of views across multiple social media channels, including YouTube, TikTok and Snapchat. Mr. White likes to rattle off follower tallies and how they compare (always favorably) to various major-league sports. “Power Slap has gained over a million and a half Instagram followers just in 2024 so far,” he said. “Which is more than NASCAR, Major League Soccer, the N.F.L., Major League Baseball and the N.H.L.”

Extreme Risks
Slap fighting was once a shapeless contest of trading hard, openhanded blows until knockout. Mr. White, with his considerable resources, has ushered it toward, if not respectability, at least a semblance of order, establishing a set of official rules and putting in place protocols that give the enterprise the appearance of legitimate sport. To that end, Mr. White said that the organization had “run toward regulation,” actively working with groups like the Nevada Athletic Commission, which officially licensed the organization to host events under its jurisdiction, to bolster the league’s legitimacy and to “make sure that the sport is regulated and safe.”

The U.F.C.’s long, arduous road to legalization and legitimacy was a result of concentrated lobbying efforts and yearslong legal battles. The organization finally secured approval for its events from each of the 50 states in 2016, overcoming opposition from those who objected to its often extreme physical violence, which studies have shown involves a high risk of head injury.

But Power Slap’s path to legitimacy may be even steeper. Skeptics say that regulations are basically irrelevant — that damage caused by slap fighting is intrinsic to the action and can’t be mitigated.

“This is not a sport, OK? This is an event,” said Dr. Gregory O’Shanick, medical director at the Brain Injury Association of America. “A sport is a contest of athleticism or skill. This is merely your physiological ability to withstand blunt-force trauma to the head. It’s like seeing how many times somebody can run into a brick wall.”

continued next post

[GeneChing]

Mr. White pointed to the U.F.C., another brutal combat sport, as a precedent. “We don’t get enough credit for this: Never a death or serious injury in 30 years of the U.F.C.,” he said. “It’s a combat sport, but we spend the money to make sure it’s as safe as you can possibly make it, and it’s the same with Power Slap.” (Some studies have indicated that U.F.C. fighting has also potentially caused traumatic brain injuries.)

Frank Lamicella, the president of Power Slap, had a more laissez-faire attitude. “Look, there’s two people hitting each other in the head, and if I was a doctor, I’d probably tell them, ‘Hey, this is maybe not the best idea,’” he said. “But if two people want to do it, we provide the platform, and we spend a ton of money making sure they’re safe.”

Mr. Lamicella, who used to be a lawyer at the firm Paul Weiss, and became close with Mr. White and the rest of the U.F.C. team after helping to facilitate the deal that brought the U.F.C. under the umbrella of Endeavor, expounds upon the rigorous so-called safety protocols the league has established. The competitors get M.R.I.s, M.R.A.s and electrocardiograms; physicals, blood exams and eye tests. There are two referees, “more than in any other combat sport,” and multiple teams of emergency medical personnel and ambulances on standby, in case a competitor needs to be taken to the hospital.

Contestants are likely to be struck on the head multiple times in the same place over the course of one fight.
Dr. O’Shanick is among the authors of an open letter, released by the Brain Injury Association of America, calling for Power Slap to be banned. The blows sustained in a slap fight, he said, are worse than what you might experience in football or boxing, largely because competitors are not allowed to defend themselves, meaning they are likely to be struck on the head multiple times in the same place over the course of one fight. That can lead to concussions, hearing loss, seizures or even chronic traumatic encephalopathy. “There will be deaths from this,” Dr. O’Shanick said. “There is no doubt. There will be deaths.”

Dayne Viernes, a slap fighter known professionally as Da Crazy Hawaiian, expressed initial reservations about the safety of the sport, in part because of warnings he had received. “There was a lot of people telling me about C.T.E. and brain damage and all this stuff,” he said. He has come to accept the risk, however. “Right now I’m listening to my body, and I hear it very well, and I don’t really believe that it will affect me the way some people think.”

Dr. O’Shanick said that because of the nature of these kinds of brain injuries, sufferers of C.T.E. do not always know they are affected.

Critics have been alarmed by the possibility that these behaviors might be replicated on the schoolyard by impressionable children, particularly given the sport’s growth across social media.

Dr. O’Shanick said that he worried about youngsters doing this, but as adults go, he seemed more flippant. “If you take a libertarian perspective, you don’t legislate it, you just let natural selection happen,” he said. “Eventually all the people engaged in this are going to die out, and you’re not going to have to worry about that population reproducing.”

Though its Las Vegas events stream live on the video platform Rumble, most people are watching Power Slap on social media, where they have the opportunity to offer feedback in real time. The tenor of the comments on Power Slap videos tends to be somewhat apocalyptic: People aren’t just saying that it’s stupid, but that it’s somehow emblematic of the stupidity of mankind.

“It’s from a slap — just a slap,” Mr. White said, laughing. “They’re acting like you just watched somebody get hit with a baseball bat.”

Mr. Lamicella said that the deluge of negative commentary online had actually accelerated the growth of the sport, because social media algorithms favor the volume of response without distinguishing between positive and negative replies. “Whenever you leave a bad comment on a Power Slap video, that helps me, so thank you,” he said. Power Slap now lists over 80 strikers on its website.

But Mr. White (who was caught slapping his own wife in public last year) said that he had experienced this kind of criticism before, when he was attempting to grow the U.F.C. “Everyone said that the U.F.C. wasn’t a real sport, that it was barbaric, that it was never going to work,” Mr. White said. Since its founding in 1993 and especially since Mr. White took over the organization in 2001, the U.F.C. has matured from niche to mainstream, with over $1 billion in annual revenue and millions tuning into its regular pay-per-view broadcasts on ESPN.

At the end of the night at the Cobalt Ballroom in Las Vegas, as Da Crazy Hawaiian was celebrating his victory in the headlining super heavyweight championship fight, he smiled and roared, lapping up the cheers of the crowd. As he thrust his championship belt into the air, an announcer asked him if next time he would be willing to take on Dumpling. “I want Dumpling so bad,” he yelled, giggling and rubbing his belly. “Feed me! Feed me!”

When asked to explain what he would want the world to know about Power Slap, if he could let them know one thing, Da Crazy Hawaiian paused for emphasis. “Like it or not, this is a sport,” he said. “And whether they like it or not, we’re doing it anyway.”

Read by Calum Marsh
Audio produced by Sarah Diamond.

I didn't c&p all the pix