Youtuber exposes Dana White’s Power slap for modified rules that make it WAY WORSE than other slap comps

Dana White’s Power slap league premiered on the 18th to lackluster ratings. The program maintained just a third of the lead – and did atrociously in the key marketing demo.

According to ShowBuzzDaily, Power Slap League’s premiere was was No. 45 in the top 50 cable telecasts for Wednesday, January 18, 2023. Power Slap, which TBS broadcasts at 10 p.m. ET, had a reported 295,000 viewers and a 0.10 rating in the 18-49 demographic.

There was plenty of criticism before the premiere of Power Slap – focusing on concussions and basically how this competition is both unfair and a precursor to CTE more or less.

White was quick to rebuff the criticism saying:

“In Slap, they take 3 to 5 slaps per event. Fighters in boxing take 300 to 400 punches a fight. Oh, you’re disgusted by it? Watch The Voice.”

This is factually inaccurate. For starters, the boxers can defend themselves in the ring.

Orlando Salido competed against Francisco Vargas in June of 2016. Salido threw a total of 939 punches and managed to land 328 of them for a 34.9% landed punch rate. Vargas threw 1184 punches and managed to land 386 of them for a 32.6% landed punch rate But this bout is an outlier not a default by any means.

Not to mention that boxing is much better paid than both UFC and the Power slap league. Floyd Mayweather made close to $500,000 per punch landed. Meanwhile a UFC vet was offered $2000 to show $2000 to win a slap duel. 

Moist Critical (born Charles White Jr.) is a youtuber and twitch streamer famous for his no-nonsense commentary videos. White’s YouTube channel has gained over 6.66 billion video views and over 12 million subscribers, averaging 151.4 million views per month on the platform; his Twitch channel has gained over 4.7 million followers and over 60 million views as per his wikipedia.

Critical was also one of the early fans of Slap competitions and even covered the recent Romanian viral incident. But what he wasn’t counting on is that he would be subjected to a lot of criticism after that from the people who thought he was promoting UFC’s Power Slap League.

Critical delivered a video response masterfully deconstructing what makes Power Slap League leagues worse than any other slap competition:

“I made so much content on professional slapping over the last few years. I love that sport more than a fish loves water. I followed it from its humble beginnings as a circus freak show side act at a weightlifting competition all the way into what it’s blossomed into today. ”

“And as a result, I’ve been catching a lot of blame for what’s recently unfolded with Power Slap. Power slap is Dana White’s new slapping sport. And it is remarkably dangerous. And I’m sure if you’ve been on Twitter today, you’ve seen the viral clips from episode one with the wild knockouts that look like someone getting hit by five different trains from all angles.”

“And since I’ve covered slapping for so long, people are blaming me for bringing it to Dana White’s attention, as if I’m just like his little court jester who was keeping him up to date on things like slapping. He and I aren’t friends. I’ve never spoken to him in my life. I’m not a fan of Dana White.”

“I think the way he treats the UFC fighters is a f**king joke. I think it’s criminal. How bad their contracts are and I have absolutely nothing to do with Power Slap, but I feel the need to defend myself because for a lot of people, especially UFC fans, they’re looking at me as the super villain, like the mustache twirling evil guy behind the scenes, the puppet master that made Dana White dance, which I actually find extremely entertaining because Power Slap flopped harder than Morbius.”

“Contrary to popular belief, I don’t like power slap. I don’t like what Dana White is doing with it, and I’ll explain why what he’s doing is significantly more dangerous than the slap fighting that I enjoy, such as Slap Fight Championship.”

“There is a very strict set of rules, as well as medical supervision and regulations that they follow to ensure that people aren’t just getting hit with f**king frying pans and forgetting who they are and where they were.”

“Now, of course, by the very nature of this, it’s dangerous. Everyone knows that, including the slappers, and everyone also knows it’s dumb. That’s not some secret. It’s not a deep cut. Everyone knows it’s stupid and they do everything they can to make it as safe as possible, except in Dana White’s power slap. ”

“…it’s just a fun, over-the-top, goofy sport. But he has a set of rules that keep it as safe as possible for the athletes. Rules that aren’t being followed by power slap, even though they do borrow some of the best slappers in the world for the show.”

“Now, to the untrained eye, this seems like business as usual for slapping sports, but there’s actually some very key differences. The first and in my opinion, one of the biggest problems is the absence of the no stepping rule. Now, to be fair, they do have stepping listed as one of the fouls, but it’s not enforced in the actual show, so it might as well just not have even been written down in the first place.”

“It basically is absent in normal slapping tournaments. You’re not allowed to step into your slaps. It’s all just upper body rotation. You can’t be like, you know, do them like a happy Gilmore up to the barrel and then slapping them on the way by with a drive by. Because obviously when you’re stepping into a slap, you’re generating significantly more power with it.”

“And since you’re not able to defend yourself in slapping, they’re taking the full force of this wallop. They’re getting served a quarter pounder with quadruple cheese. It’s a lot more force behind that because they stepped into it. Now, you might be asking yourself, why aren’t they enforcing a no stepping rule if it’s so commonplace? And the answer is because Dana White only cares about the spectacle of the sport.”

“And in his little smooth brain, he thinks the spectacle is just big chaos. So the more chaos, the more people are going to get interested in hype and excited, the more people will watch it, which is more money in his pocket. So anything to really increase the amount of chaos, I imagine Dana White views as a positive thing.”

“So they’re not enforcing a strict no stepping rule, which is leading to significantly more knockouts in power slap than in any other slapping tournament I’ve ever seen. Compare this to any other slapping tournament, and it’s like ten X in power slap.”

“And it’s not just because of the no stepping rule. They also don’t really enforce clubbing. Another common rule in slapping is no clubbing.”

“That refers to not hitting with like this part of your hand because at that point you’re basically just f**king punching the person. It’s like a monk strike, like a monk palm strike to the face.”

“What you’re supposed to be hitting with is up in here, you know, I’m giving the anatomy of a slap right now, but this is what you’re looking to actually hit someone with when it comes to slapping.”

“You know, it still generates power. It’s still nice, loud Looney Tunes level noise with a slap. And it’s still exciting, but it’s not nearly as dangerous or potentially fatal as getting clubbed like this. That’s very serious by the way. There actually has been a fatality as a result of slapping tournaments where a famous strongman from Poland named Artur (Walus) unfortunately passed away due to the injury he suffered in a slapping tournament.”

Later he added:
“It was absolutely tragic and it’s why safety needs to be taken very seriously when it comes to this sport, which right now Power Slap isn’t doing at all.”

 

He went on to reiterate that Power Slap’s rules are seriously compromising the health of the competitors with the lack of clubbing rule:

“It would be called a club in every other slapping event except power Slap. I guess it is just nonstop clubbing there. So the fact that Dana White’s wiping his a** with any level of rules that help the fighters not suffer life changing injuries is pretty disgraceful.”

“It’s not because he didn’t know about these rules either, by the way. He’s someone who’s clearly done his research on it because he’s emulated and even taken things from like Slap Fight Championship. But for some reason he’s not actually enforcing the rules because he’s too enamored with all of the knockouts. And there have been pretty much nonstop knockdowns from Power Slap, it seems, which isn’t really something to be celebrating because these are real people that are taking this damage.”

 

Full video of Critical explaining the abhorrent differences in Dana White’s competition to other Slap contests: