The most controversial new sport since, well, mixed martial arts, has arrived with a bang in the United States. Power Slap League, owned by UFC President Dana White and partners who include former UFC owner Lorenzo Fertitta, debuted at the UFC’s APEX Center in Las Vegas on January 18.
At a time of increased awareness around concussion, a sport where athletes alternately slap each other under conditions where defense is prohibited appears to be unhinged. However, objectively, the participants do not appear to receive any more head trauma than is seen normally in Karate Combat, western boxing, muay Thai, sanda, and of course MMA.
Another major criticism of Power Slap is that it is entirely devoid of technique, that it is the direct equivalent of, for example, seeing how high a bowling ball can be dropped onto one’s foot, or some similar inanity. However, that argument too was made in the earliest days of MMA, that it was just street fighting in a cage, or to use a term infamously popularized by then Federal Senator John McCain, “human cockfighting.”
Objectively, at first glance, there appears to be precious little technique involved. That said, John Morgan, the editor-in-chief at mixedmartialarts.com, spoke recently with some of the players, who said pointedly there is a lot of technique involved.
Power Slap League was recently regulated by the Nevada Athletic Commission. There are medical requirements, weight classes, and matchmaking similar to what is standard for MMA.
The Basic Rules
•Slaps have to be administered with an open hand, not with a fist, or the wrist.
•The feet must stay in contact with the ground, and there is no pivoting.
•The slap must be received without moving away before hand.
•In a match, participants alternate striker and defender roles three to five times.
•Participants have up to 30 seconds to execute a slap, and 30 seconds to recover.
•There is a ten count in the event of a knockdown.
•If there is no knockout, there is 10 Point Must scoring, based offensively on the effectiveness of strikes, and defensively on reaction and recovery time.
The Roster
Participants include:
•Alex Asbury, former college football player
•Vernon Cathey, powerlifter and Highland Games vet
•John Davis, powerlifter
•AyJay Hintz, combat sports vet
•Jesse Nutting, jiu-jitsu purple belt and military vet
•Devon Schwan, competitive bodybuilder
•Jewel Scott, MMA vet
•Robert Trujillo, MMA fighter
What It Looks Like
Here is Dana White’s ad for the opener on Wednesday:
And this is a little of what it looked like:
Fans can catch Power Slap League action on TBS, which is available via cable/satellite, and in the USA via Sling TV. Fans outside the USA can stream the content via Rumble.
Slap fighting is new to the United States, but is already popular in other regions of the world. Here are highlights from the RXF Slap finals, which streamed live from Romania
The guy with the face and a half won, Sorin Comsa, earned a little over $5,000 for his efforts.
What do you think?
