Former Nevada Athletic Commission Chairman Says He Now Regrets Sanctioning Slap Fights

While the UFC continues to grow despite fighter pay largely stagnates (See: Ngannou, Francis), Dana White is trying his hand at building another “combat sport” in the US.

Thus we have the introduction of the Power Slap league.

Power Slap, which is produced by White, is exactly what it sounds like. Two, typically large men stand across a table from one another and slap that s*** out of one another until one of the two combatants cannot continue.

Unsurprisingly, White and Power slap have had to deal with a ton of pushback. But that doesn’t appear to be slowing him or the league down.

Perhaps the largest hurdle White and company had to clear was getting the events sanctioned by the Nevada Athletic Association.

Now Stephen J. Cloobeck, who was chairman of the state commission when it sanctioned slap fighting, says he regrets doing so.

“I made a mistake,” Cloobeck said to the Mark Anderson of the Associated Press. “I’m not happy about it.”

Anderson also spoke to Harvard graduate, former WWE superstar, and CEO of the Concussion Legacy Foundation, Chris Nowinski.

Nowinski told Anderson that slap fighting was “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, meanwhile, is undeterred. Instead he’s touting the success of the league’s growing popularity.

“So I started a power slap TikTok 2.5 weeks ago. As of two days ago, it has 1.7 million followers,” White recently boasted on the Bussin With The Boys podcast. “…When we first opened it, it was growing 10,000 followers an hour. Then it went to 100,000 every two days. Now we’re 100,000 every two days it grows.”

The numbers are the numbers. But you have to wonder whether White puts any thought at all into the human cost.