What is competitive slap fighting?

Brut America

Yes, competitive slap fighting is a real sport ... and it's extremely dangerous. Here's why.

Transcript

00:00A legal slap is flat, open-handed shot to the side of the face.

00:04Two competitors basically stand across from one another and slap each other.

00:09They're not allowed to protect themselves or flinch or move away from the slap.

00:13It's purely standing across from your competitor and trading slaps until either all the rounds end

00:20or one of the competitors is just unable to continue because of being

00:24concussed or injured or something else.

00:27In recent years, viral clips of the shocking and brutal sport of slap fighting have made

00:31their way from Eastern Europe to the U.S. Now, in the UFC-backed show Power Slap,

00:36the controversial sport has made its way to American airwaves.

00:39Red has chosen right to right.

00:46I'm not a fan at all of slap fighting and I wish that it hadn't been permitted to start

00:50taking place in the United States because essentially you're not allowed to protect

00:54yourself. So the difference with a sport like boxing or mixed martial arts,

00:59the referees actually tell the competitors before the fight, protect yourself at all times.

01:02They can try and deflect punches. They can try and get out of different submission attempts.

01:06And so it feels like it's a little bit more even and more of a true kind of competition rather than

01:11in slap fighting, if you flinch, if you try to move out of the way,

01:15if you do anything to protect yourself, you lose.

01:18And so it basically takes away all of the defensive possibilities to protect yourself.

01:22The biggest danger is by far concussions, so traumatic brain injuries.

01:25And you're going to have that danger in other combat sports, of course.

01:28And so I don't think it's safe to say that just the idea of slapping somebody

01:33is more dangerous than boxing or punching. But it's more, again,

01:36that fact that you can't defend, you can't protect yourself.

01:38And basically the goal is to knock somebody out and give somebody a concussion.

01:42People don't realize there's a lot of risk for other facial injuries.

01:45So a lot of times there's, you know, you're striking

01:48bones on the face where you can suffer facial fractures.

01:51The competitors actually are required to put cotton in their ears

01:54because if you forcibly slap somebody with an open hand over an ear,

01:58the increase in the amount of pressure inside the ear can actually rupture somebody's eardrum.

02:02And then the other side of it is, of course, when somebody does get slapped and knocked out,

02:06they often fall backwards and potentially landing on their head,

02:09suffering some other sort of injury.

02:11Doctors worry that the full long-term effects of the brutal blows

02:14will be difficult to determine for years to come.

02:16Concussion can be life altering.

02:18I think the challenge right now with concussion research and things like CTE

02:22is we don't have a great sense of how many concussions or how many head injuries,

02:29how big of a head injury.

02:30We don't really know the dose in terms of what will lead somebody to

02:34be at risk of something like chronic traumatic encephalopathy,

02:37which can absolutely be life altering.

02:39And so a good way I've heard it described is, you know,

02:42it's like we have money in our bank account and every time you get a head injury,

02:45you're withdrawing some money from the bank account.

02:48The problem is we don't know how much money is in our bank account.

02:50And so for some people that might be a lot of money.

02:52They might do just fine.

02:53They might never notice any real long-term issues or effects.

02:56But for other people, it could be life altering in terms of issues with memory,

03:01issues with, you know, mood disorders,

03:03which can obviously carry over and affect the rest of your life.

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