UFC veteran Dan Hardy believes infamous Will Smith Oscars slapping incident was staged – and there’s reason to believe it might be

Benny A. King

UFC veteran turned MMA analyst, Dan Hardy recently shared his belief that the infamous Oscars slapping incident was staged.

During the ceremony, Chris Rock was presenting the award for “Best Documentary”. The comedian was cracking jokes about the celebrities in the audience and decided to crack a joke about Will Smith’s wife Jada Pinkett Smith.

After a joke about her hair loss made her uncomfortable, Will Smith decided to get up on stage and slap Chris Rock in front of the whole world.

However, according to the former UFC fighter, that whole ordeal was staged by the two celebrities.

On his Twitter page, Hardy argued that the slap was “movie-like” and that he is surprised that people are actually buying into the narrative.

Hardy’s opinion arguably holds more weight when you take into consideration that the Englishman is one of MMA’s best analysts.

During the late stages of his MMA career Hardy became known as one of the best analysts in the sport. He worked for years within the UFC, doing a segment called “Inside the Octagon” alongside John Gooden. Hardy has since fallen from grace after a series of incidents.

After years of working for the UFC, Hardy was fired from the company in March of 2021. The details of his departure have never been thoroughly explained, but reports state that it had something to do with Hardy getting in an argument with a female employee in Abu Dhabi.

But his expertise aside it’s a well known fact that the notorious Movie award show was losing steam for the last couple of years. The ratings for the televised broadcast of the awards ceremony had tanked and were on the verge of ‘cancellation’ of sorts.

2022 Oscars ceremony had an uptick of 50% compared to last year when they hit record low viewership. 4 hour telecast drew 15.36 million viewers, per Variety’s reports. While this is much more than the 2021 ceremony it’s also second lowest rated ceremony of all time.

Producers also controversially cut eight technical categories from the telecast in order to make it a better viewing experience. Before last year, the ceremony had never dipped below 20 million viewers.

And while Hardy might be trying to gin up interest for his brand – the fact is that this viral moment is just the type of content that might attract younger generations to view the program.