Slap fighting sees competitors try to slap each other in the face as hard as possible, sometimes resulting in a knockout. UFC president Dana White is selling it as the next big thing in combat sports, but experts worry about the potential for brain damage.
, whose family has tried to raise awareness about the disease. CTE can only be detected during an autopsy.Despite the naysayers, Mr White said he believed slap fighting would follow a similar trajectory to mixed martial arts, which late US senator John McCain referred to as "human cockfighting" in 1996, when the UFC did not have weight classes or many rules.
Mr White said he realised 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 and the slap matches unregulated. Mr White became convinced that fights with written rules and shot with professional video equipment could convert many internet viewers into dedicated, paying fans.
Mr White apologised, but acknowledged it damaged efforts to get the league off the ground. Mr White is no newcomer to controversy: Former UFC fighters Kajan Johnson and Clarence Dollaway filed a lawsuit in 2021 against Endeavor, the organisation's parent company, alleging that UFC took an inordinate share of the profits.
Mr White says slap fighting is safer than boxing or mixed martial arts because each contestant usually takes only three blows per bout. Mr Nowinski of the concussion foundation said while there might be no sparring in practice sessions, that did not mean it did not happen elsewhere. He said comparing boxing to power slapping was misleading because slap fighters took a full blow each time.
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