Last Word: Should Power Slap be called a sport?

The crudest human reaction to a perceived insult is set to make millionaires of those who see dollar signs in everything. What next? Nail-biting as a television sport? Ear wax-clearing as international competition?

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. | Photo Credit: AP

So how did power slapping become sport? Was it inspired by Will Smith’s slap on a surprised Chris Rock during the Oscars? And was cricketer Harbhajan Singh the first international sportsman to bring it to this country when he slapped Santhakumaran Sreeshanth during an IPL match long ago? My apologies, this is more serious than all that.

Power slapping is a growing sport, and since one of this column’s concerns is growing sports, here are the rules: Each match is broken into 10 rounds, with competitors delivering and receiving one slap per round. If the person getting slapped — the defender — can’t recover from the hit within 60 seconds, they lose the match.

Defenders also get penalised for flinching, which includes ducking their head, raising their shoulder or turning their body to protect their face. The person slapping — the striker — must have both feet on the ground before slapping the defender with the heel of their hand, palm and fingers hitting at the same time. 

They are allowed to “wind-up,” or practice the trajectory of their swing, up to two times as long as they tell the referee and the defender how many practice swings they plan to take. Strikers are penalised for lifting their feet, slapping or winding-up inappropriately and hitting the defender’s eyes, ears, mouth and temple.

I have taken that from a serious article on the “sport” from the  CBS News website, somewhat horrified that television sees money in it (or why would it telecast anything?). It has support from Arnold Schwarzzaneger too, and soon, I am sure, those who equate sport with “manliness” and the tough guy image will be queueing up to slap and be slapped in the name of sport. 

The sport saw a casualty in 2021 when one competitor died.

The  Discovery cable station  TBS began televising Power Slap, while Nevada athletic officials approved UFC (Ultimate Fighting Championship) President as lead promoter for the Power Slap League.  TBS has since pulled out, but the UFC are promoting it. So now it is only a question of marketing.

That most crude of human reactions to a perceived insult is set to make millionaires of those who see dollar signs in everything. What next? Nail-biting as a television sport? Ear wax-clearing as international competition? 

Neuroscientists say slap fighting isn’t safe, but the promoters say that boxing isn’t safe either, so what else you got? 

Slapper and slappee (as they might soon be called) stand to make thousands of dollars per slap, and if television audiences encourage the sport, the entire sporting-marketing-political-Olympic complex might swing into action, and we (or our grandchildren) will be wondering what the fuss was all about. Money is often the final justification.

Yet there is something stunningly puerile and dangerous about the whole thing that suggests that we as a race are either amazingly bored with the sports that we have or find suffering the most palatable of visual joys. Neither shows us or our new “sport” in a good light.