Getty Image
UFC Hall of Famer Forrest Griffin rose to prominence after winning the inaugural season of The Ultimate Fighter and then went on to become the UFC Light Heavyweight Champion.
Since retiring from UFC fighting in 2012, he was inducted into the Hall of Fame in 2013 and then took a job as Vice President of Athlete Development at the UFC Performance Institute in Nevada. He now has a new job with Dana White’s Power Slap.
Dana White’s new combat sports league, Power Slap, is set to premiere with an 8-episode season on TBS. It premieres at 10 PM on January 11th and Forrest Griffin will be featured prominently as a ‘head catcher’.
His new title is almost exactly what it sounds like. As a Power Slap ‘head catcher’, he’ll catch heads after the PS fighters are slapped silly. Here he calls it a ‘pretty interesting gig’ in the teaser video posted on UFC’s YouTube channel:
What exactly is the need for a ‘Head Catcher’ in UFC’s Power Slap? If it wasn’t already obvious, Forrest Griffin does an excellent job of explaining the crucial role of this new combat sport.
Griffin says “That double impact… You’ve taken the first trauma and when your head hits the ground, bang bang, both sides of your brain actually bounce against your skull. We want to prevent that and make it just the initial impact and have that be what causes you or not causes you to win or lose the competition.”
This deep dive into the Power Slap rules will also clear up any confusing combat sports might have about Dana White’s new project.
In the run up to the season launching on TBS they’ve started releasing clips on Instagram of what fans might expect. It looks as barbaric as one might expect:
One of the craziest rules in this new combat sports league pertains to knockdowns. If knocked down, they have a 10 count to “rise to their feet and establish their fitness to continue as determined by the referee, and confirmed by the ringside physician.”
If the defender gets KTFO on the very first slap of the bout, the promoter has the option of allowing them to continue, if they are able to recover within a two-minute time period that starts after the knockout.
“Once the referee declares the finish, a clock of two minutes begins,” the rule reads. “During this time, the Defender is given two minutes to recover, establish their fitness to continue as determined by the referee and cleared by the supervising physician and complete one Permitted Slap of their opponent. If the return strike results in a technical knockout or knockout of their opponent, the match is declared a Draw. If the return strike has any other result, then the Match result stands.”
Given the focus on knockouts, it seems as if Forrest Griffin will be playing a crucial role in each bout.