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The Hauser Report — Slap Fighting: A Bad Idea Whose Time Shouldn’t Come

On October 18, 2022, the Nevada State Athletic Commission approved a proposal to categorize slap fighting as unarmed combat that will be allowed when conducted pursuant to rules and regulations promulgated by the State of Nevada and overseen by the commission.
UFC president Dana White, Fertitta Capital (an investment firm owned by former UFC owners Lorenzo and Frank Fertitta), Endeavor (which bought UFC in 2016), UFC chief business officer Hunter Campbell, TV producer Craig Piligan (“The Ultimate Fighter”), and Zeke Capital (a hedge fund) are the primary owners of an entity called Power Slap League which will be the most obvious beneficiary of the ruling.
During the commission meeting, NSAC chairman Stephen Cloobeck said that a video prepared by Power Slap League personnel that he watched was “highly entertaining” and praised the involvement of “professionals who know what they’re doing.”
Now let’s get real.
MMA writer Ben Fowlkes recently called slap fighting “a nascent sport crawling out of the primordial ooze” and “the dumbest sport imaginable.”
“The concept of slap fighting,” Fowlkes elaborated, “is about as simple as it gets. Two people stand across from each other and take turns hitting each other in the face with an open hand until, one way or another, someone has had enough. It might be the only combat sport where any form of defense is expressly, explicitly banned.”
To repeat; there’s no defense. Competitors are not allowed to keep their guard up or move their head. They wait for the blow. How hard they can hit and how much punishment they can take determine who wins. Whoever knocks his opponent out emerges victorious. It’s brutal and it’s dangerous.
Last year, a Polish slap fighter named Artur “Waluś” Walczak died from brain injuries after being knocked out in a slap fight in Wrocław.
So why is the Nevada State Athletic Commission working with the Fertittas, Dana White, and their brethren to enable this venture?
“We already know the answer,” Fowlkes writes. “The answer is money. There’s simply no way you can get me to believe that White and the Fertittas and the rest of the gang saw a Belarussian slap fighting competition on YouTube and said to each other, ‘This is an important movement, and, for the sake of our legacies, we need to be a part of it.'”
Appearing before the Nevada State Athletic Commission on October 18, Hunter Campbell testified that slap fighting intends to follow “an identical template for what we have with UFC events,” and added, “We’ve spent the last year sort of beta-testing this in a controlled environment to really test and see sort of the dynamic of how this would function as an actual league and real sport. What we’ve found is that this is actually a skill sport; that the participants that are at a high level in this are skilled athletes. They train. They’re in good shape. They take it seriously.”
As reported by CombatSportsLaw.com, when asked about the NSAC’s decision to legitimize slap fighting, Nevada deputy attorney general Joel Bekker (who works with the commission) responded, “I can assure you that licensed doctors with knowledge and experience working with unarmed combat athletes were consulted with to assure that Slap Fighting, like all other regulated unarmed combat sports in Nevada, is conducted as safely as possible with the ultimate goal being the health and safety of all participants.”
The Sweet Science reached out to the Nevada Attorney General’s Office and asked which doctors Bekker was referring to in his statement and which doctors, if any, testified before the NSAC regarding slap fighting.
The Nevada Attorney General’s Office declined to answer the question other than to state that the doctor in question (apparently there was only one) “has been actively licensed in Nevada since the 1990s and worked for the NSAC in the past.” That sounds like the resume of a physician currently employed by UFC. Where are the independent medical observers?
One might also ask about the “beta testing in a controlled environment” that Campbell says Power Slap League (or its proxies) conducted. How many times were defenseless combatants hit in the head as part of the testing process? How many of these combatants were concussed? What other injuries did they suffer? How much of the testing process was recorded on video? How much of this video was destroyed? Did the commission ask to see the rest of the video or only the carefully edited “entertaining” video that the commission chair referenced?
Bekker further advised, “Slap fighting competitors are mandated to wear protective gear during their bouts including a tooth/gum shield and cotton ear padding . . . The scoring target area deliberately excludes the eyes, nose, chin, neck, and temple areas of the head and face. Strikes outside that area are considered Fouls . . . All competitions will have ‘Catchers’ or ‘Spotters’ behind the defensive competitor to ensure that struck competitors do not hit the ground hard, especially their heads.”
The cotton ear padding is supposed to help protect slap fighters against ruptured eardrums. Brain bleeds and the specter of chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE) are of greater concern.
I’m not an expert on slap fighting. But I’ve looked at the videos and I think it’s awful. The cardinal rule in combat sports is to protect yourself at all times. In boxing or MMA, if a fighter can’t defend himself or herself, the referee stops the fight. And the whole point of slap fighting is to hit someone in the head as hard as you can while he or she is not allowed to defend himself.
Dr. Nitin Sethi (a neurologist whose primary practice is affiliated with Weill Cornell Medicine) is chief medical officer for the New York State Athletic Commission. Putting slap fighting in perspective, Dr. Sethi states, “Concussions and acute traumatic brain injuries are common in combat sports. In boxing, every punch thrown at the head is thrown with the intention of winning by causing a knockout which is a concussive brain injury.”
“Subdural hematoma,” Dr. Sethi continues, “remains the most common cause of boxing-related mortality. Boxers, as you are painfully aware, have died in the ring or in the immediate aftermath of a bout. The ones who survive by undergoing a timely decompressive hemicraniectomy are left behind with devastating and lifelong neurological deficits. The far bigger burden and problem is that of chronic neurological injuries such as chronic traumatic encephalopathy. Unfortunately, this burden remains hidden and comes to medical attention long after the fighter has retired.”
Turning to slap fighting, Dr. Sethi explains, “Open-handed slaps delivered with such force to the opponents face frequently cause the person’s legs to buckle, at times suffer momentary – sometimes longer – loss of consciousness, and collapse to the floor. These are all concussive injuries of varying duration. The ‘athlete’ who is on the receiving end of the slap has no option available to him to defend himself. These ‘slaps’ will add up. In my professional opinion, those who partake in this ‘sport’ will also suffer the stigmata of chronic neurological injuries.”
Finally, Sethi adds, “I disagree with the argument that better medical supervision of this ‘sport’ shall make it safer. I am not sure what a physician is meant to supervise here other than being the overseer of concussive injuries occurring under his or her watch.”
Dr. Michael Schwartz (the driving force behind creation of the Association of Ringside Physicians) is equally pointed in his criticism.
“We’ve spent so many years trying to educate commissions and fighters about brain damage,” Dr. Schwartz says. “And now you have this. These guys get hit in the head. You’re inflicting a concussion without allowing the combatant to in any way protect himself. And then he gets hit in the head again. Every concussion is brain damage. The first concussion is damaging. And with second impact syndrome, the second concussion can be life-threatening. It’s insane.”
Nevada State Athletic Commission executive director Jeff Mullen supported the decision to enable slap fighting. To justify this position, Mullen says, “This sport needs to be regulated. And if we don’t regulate it, it will be taking place everywhere all over town without any kind of regulations, without any kind of safety standard. By regulating this, we can make sure that there’s doctors there, ambulances there, that the fighters have physicals, they have eye exams, they have MRIs and MRAs. And if we don’t regulate it, we’re going to have people competing right off a bar stool and it’s going to be a dangerous situation. I think, for the health and safety of our constituents, we have to do that.”
That’s nonsense.
Yes, slap fighting is easy to run as an outlaw sport. There’s no ring, just two combatants standing or sitting at a table. They don’t even need gloves. But if slap fighting goes mainstream, it will encourage more people – particularly young people – to emulate it. That will mean more slap fighting in casual settings such as school playgrounds and bars.
Maybe someone should seat the NSAC commissioners at a table. Let a 300-pound slap fighter whack each of them in the head. Then let’s see if the commissioners want to reconsider their vote.
Meanwhile, don’t call it “slap fighting.” That cosmeticizes the brutality. Call it what it is – “whack a defenseless person in the head as hard as you can to cause brain damage.”
Thomas Hauser’s email address is thomashauserwriter@gmail.com. His most recent book – In the Inner Sanctum: Behind the Scenes at Big Fights – was just published by the University of Arkansas Press. In 2004, the Boxing Writers Association of America honored Hauser with the Nat Fleischer Award for career excellence in boxing journalism. In 2019, Hauser was selected for boxing’s highest honor – induction into the International Boxing Hall of Fame.
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Australia’s Liam Paro Aims to Steal the Show on the Haney-Prograis Card

These are heady days for the sport of professional boxing in Australia. Cruiserweight Jai Opetaia is the best fighter in his weight class. Tim Tszyu is a major star in the Land Down Under and his younger brother Nikita is lapping at his heels. Then there’s undefeated super lightweight Liam Paro, 27, whose profile will grow immensely if he can get past Cleveland’s Montana Love when they meet on Dec. 9 in San Francisco at the home of the Golden State Warriors. It’s a 12-rounder that will serve as the chief supporting bout to the showdown between Devin Haney and Regis Prograis.
Forget the fact that Matchroom honcho Eddie Hearn has seen fit to dress up this fight with some frivolous title; this is a good match-up. An undefeated southpaw, Liam Paro (23-0, 14 KOs) is coming off the best win of his career. Montana Love (18-1-1, 9 KOs) would likely be undefeated too if not for a bizarre disqualification in his most recent bout. He too is a southpaw.
Paro turned heads in is his last outing when he scored a brutal, one-punch, opening-round knockout of countryman Brock Jarvis. Paro was favored, bur Jarvis, a disciple of Jeff Fenech, Australia’ most famous living boxer, was accorded the better chance of ending the bout with one punch.
Paro vs. Jarvis, staged in October of last year in South Brisbane, marked Matchroom’s first foray into Australia. Paro has had two fights fall out in the interim. The British Boxing Board of Control pulled Paro out of a March 11, 2003 match in Liverpool, England with Robbie Davies Jr. when a routine but mandatory scan showed evidence of a facial fracture. Three months later, Paro was forced to withdraw from a title fight with WBA 140-pound belt-holder Regis Prograis because both of his Achilles tendons were inflamed, compromising his mobility.
The facial fracture, insists Paro, was a false positive; the test was defective. As for the Achilles issue, that’s cleared up. “It’s in my rear-view mirror,” he says.
Paro was raised in the city of Mackay which is near the Coral Sea coast of Queensland. His ancestors migrated here from Italy to work in the sugarcane fields. Unlike so many other dads, his father Errol, a welder in the steel industry, has no boxing background and isn’t directly involved in preparing his son for a fight. Errol is with his son in Las Vegas at the moment (Errol’s first visit to Sin City) and will be there with several other family members to cheer on Liam when he resumes his career in San Francisco on Dec. 9.
When healthy, Liam Paro can usually be found training at the Top Rank Gym in Las Vegas. The boxing infrastructure of the Southern Nevada city draws prizefighters from around the world. He has sparred extensively with Jamel Herring and has boxed with the likes of Shakur Stevenson and Devin Haney. Practicing his craft with fighters of that caliber may give him an edge when he touches gloves with Montana Love.
Montana Love
Montana Love came to the fore in August of 2021 when he stepped up in class and upset Russian tough guy Ivan Baranchyk on a Jake Paul promotion in Cleveland. Baranchyk’s handlers stopped the one-sided affair after seven rounds. Five weeks later, Love signed with Matchroom.

Montana Love
What followed was a third-round blast-out of 29-1 Carlos Diaz followed by a hard-earned 12-round decision over Gabriel Gollaz Valenzuela and then a match with Australia’s Steve Spark which marked Love’s debut as a top-of-the-marquee attraction in his hometown.
The fight between Love and Spark was even on two scorecards after five rounds. In the sixth, shortly after a clash of heads left Love with a bad cut over his left eye, Love pushed Spark out of the ring and was immediately disqualified by referee David Fields. It was a controversial call; a “terrible call” in the words of Eddie Hearn. For the record, after flipping over the top strand of rope, Spark landed on his feet and was fit to continue.
A 28-year-old father of three, Love has always had the vibe of a hungry fighter, a residue of the adversity he has had to overcome. His father died when he was three years old and his mother was only 38 when she passed away from colon cancer. In 2015, as his career was just getting started, he was remanded to prison on theft- and drug-related charges and served 16 months.
It’s rather ironic that Love will be facing an Australian opponent on American soil in back-to-back fights. Needless to say, he hopes that the second installment will go better than the first.
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The Murder of Samuel Teah Calls to Mind Other Boxers Who Were Homicide Victims

There will be a boxing show this Friday at Philadelphia’s 2300 Arena, a low-budget card featuring the return of former IBF 130-pound world title-holder Tevin Farmer. During the event, there will assuredly be a somber moment when those in attendance stand and silently pay homage to Samuel Teah as the timekeeper tolls the traditional 10-bell farewell. Teah passed away last week on Black Friday, Nov. 24, another victim of America’s epidemic of gun violence. He was 36 years old.
Teah was shot in the mid-afternoon during an altercation that spilled onto the sidewalk of a street in Wilmington, Delaware, and died at a Wilmington hospital. As of this writing, there’s been no arrest, but the shooting was apparently not random. A bus driver for the Southeastern Pennsylvania Transit Authority, Teah was purportedly in Wilmington (roughly 35 miles from his home in Philadelphia) to visit the mother of his child.
Samuel Teah fought as recently as this past May when he suffered a shocking defeat at the hands of journeyman Andrew Rodgers at a show in Pennsylvania’s Newton Township, reducing his record to 19-5-1. Two months earlier he had spoiled the undefeated record of Enriko Gogokhia, an Egis Klimas fighter (think Oleksandr Usyk and Vasily Lomachenko) on a card in Ontario, California. This embellished his reputation as a spoiler. Earlier in his career, he had spoiled the undefeated record of O’Shaquie Foster, winning an 8-round unanimous decision over the man that currently reigns as the WBC world super featherweight champion.
What made Teah’s death more tragic, if that were possible, were all the tragedies that he had overcome. He was born in Liberia when that country was embroiled in a civil war. The family escaped to a refugee camp in Ghana and eventually reached the United States, settling first in New York and then Philadelphia. On the day after Christmas in 2008, when Teah was 21 and working at a Home Depot, he lost six members of his family in a fire that swept his mother’s West Philadelphia duplex after a kerosene heater exploded.
For some, Teah’s violent death may call to mind the murder of another Philadelphia boxer, Tyrone Everett.
That’s an awkward comparison.
Tyrone Everett was a world-class fighter. Six months before he was shot dead by his girlfriend in May of 1977, Everett, then 34-0, lost a 15-round split decision to Puerto Rico’s Alfredo Escalera in a failed bid to win Escalera’s WBC junior lightweight title, a decision so rancid that it stands among the worst decisions of all time. Moreover, the circumstances of Everett’s murder were sordid. His girlfriend, no stranger to the police, fatally shot him after finding him with a transvestite and there was heroin in the apartment they shared. (Editor’s note: For more on this incident, check out the new book by TSS contributor Sean Nam: “Murder on Federal Street: Tyrone Everett, the Black Mafia, Fixed Fights, and the Last Golden Age of Philadelphia Boxing” available on Amazon).
Samuel Teah was no Tyrone Everett. A man of deep faith, Sam’s positive attitude, despite all his tribulations, was infectious. “Everyone liked Teah,” said prominent Philadelphia sports journalist Joe Santoliquito who, upon hearing of Teah’s death, tweeted, “he will always have a special place in my heart.”
While the circumstances are different in every case, Teah joins a long list of boxers who met a violent death. If we limit the list to fighters who were still active at the time of their passing, here are four that jump immediately to mind.
Stanley Ketchel
The fabled Michigan Assassin, Ketchel met his maker on Oct. 15, 1910, at a ranch in Conway, Missouri. In the immortal words of John Lardner, “Stanley Ketchel was twenty-four years old when he was fatally shot in the back by the common-law husband of the lady who was cooking his breakfast.”
Battling Siki
Famed for knocking out Georges Carpentier when the “Orchid Man” held the world light heavyweight title, Siki was only 28 years old when he was gunned down in the Hell’s Kitchen neighborhood of Manhattan on Dec. 15, 1925, but by then the Senegal-born Frenchman had already degenerated into a trial horse. Siki’s body was found in the middle of the street with two bullets in his back fired at close range by an assailant, never identified, who was thought to be avenging a beating he suffered at one of the speakeasies that Siki was known to frequent.
Oscar Bonavena
At age 33, Oscar Bonavena was still an active boxer when he was gunned down on May 22, 1976, on the outskirts of Reno, Nevada, at the front gate of the infamous Mustang Ranch, a legal brothel. Bonavena had come up short in his biggest fights, losing a 15-round decision to Joe Frazier and losing by TKO in the 15th round to Muhammad Ali, but the rugged Argentine was still a major player in the heavyweight division.
The shooter was a bodyguard for the brothel’s owner Joe Conforte, and rumor has that Conforte was the de facto triggerman, having Bonavena assassinated because the boxer was having an affair with Conforte’s 59-year-old wife Sally who was also Bonavena’s manager of record at this point in the boxer’s career. The story about it spawned “Love Shack,” a 2010 movie that despite a seemingly can’t-miss storyline and a formidable cast (Joe Pesci played Joe and Helen Mirren played Sally) proved to be a box-office dud.
Vernon Forrest
While all homicides are tragic, some are more distressing than others and the death of Vernon Forrest on July 25, 2009, was particularly gut-wrenching. Forrest was shot twice in the back by would-be robbers with whom he exchanged gunfire on July 25, 2009 at a gas station in Atlanta.
Forget the fact that Forrest was a two-division title-holder who had regained the WBC world super welterweight title in his most recent fight with a lopsided decision over Sergio Mora. Few in the sport were as widely admired. His philanthropic work included establishing group homes in Atlanta for the mentally disabled. His death came just two weeks after the death of Arturo Gatti who left the sport following a loss by TKO to Alfonso Gomez in July of 2007 and died under suspicious circumstances at age 37 at a hotel in Brazil.
We here at The Sweet Science send our condolences to Samuel Teah’s family and loved ones. May he rest in peace.
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Benavidez Dismantles Andrade: Will Canelo Be Next?

SHOWTIME aired its final pay-per-view event tonight with a show that aired from Mandalay Bay in Las Vegas. The four-fight PPV card included world title fights in the 140 and 130-pound divisions, plus an interim title fight at 168 and the return of former two-division title-holder Jarmall Charlo. The interim title fight was a battle of unbeatens between David Benavidez and Demetrius “Boo Boo” Andrade and that was the featured attraction.
Benavidez, 26, is big for the weight class and lived up to his new nickname, “El Monstro.” He had too much firepower for the 35-year-old Andrade, a 2008 Beijing Olympian who began his pro career at 154 and had won world titles in two lower weight classes. His big moment came in the waning seconds of round four when he knocked Andrade to his knees with a sweeping right hand. The fight turned brutally one-sided at that point although one of the judges had Benavidez ahead by only one point when the sixth round ended. But there would be no seventh round. Andrade’s corner wisely stopped the fight.
A consensus 7/2 favorite in man-to-man betting, Benavidez (28-0, 24 KOs) began his pro career in Mexico at age 16. In his post-fight interview, he called out Canelo Alvarez while brashly predicting that he would be a legend before he left the sport (and you’ll get no argument from this corner). It was the first pro loss for Andrade (32-1).
Co-Feature
Jermall Charlo returned to the ring after a 29-month absence and scored a lopsided 10-round decision over Jose Benavidez Jr. The judges had it 100-90, 99-91, and 98-92.
This bout was slated for the catch-weight of 163 pounds. Charlo came in overweight (166.4) but the match went ahead. Benavides Jr, a world title challenger during his days as a welterweight, had his moments, but was outclassed by Charlo who advanced his record to 33-0 (22). Benavidez falls to 28-3-1.
Matias-Ergashev
In what shaped up as the most action-packed fight of the night, 31-year-old Puerto Rican Subriel Matias retained his IBF 140-pound title, battering Shohjahon Ergashev into submission in a match that was halted by Ergashev’s corner two seconds into the sixth round. The heavy-handed Ergashev, who was undefeated heading in, dominated the first round-and-a-half, but Matias (20-1, 20 KOs) gradually wore him down.
Matias, who avenged his lone defeat to Petros Ananyan with a dominant showing in the rematch, had become something of a forgotten man in the talent-rich 140-pound weight class, but tonight he showed that he belongs among the elite in the division. It was the first pro loss for Egrashev (23-1, 20 KOs), a southpaw from Uzbekistan who fights out of Detroit and had SugarHill Steward (formally Javan “Sugar” Hill) in his corner.
Garcia-Roach
In the pay-per-view opener, Lamont Roach (24-1-1, 9 KOs) wrested the WBA 130-pound title from Hector Garcia (16-2) with a well-earned split decision. The judges had it 116-111 and 144-113 for Roach with the dissenter favoring Garcia 114-113.
A 32-year-old Dominican southpaw, Garcia was making the first defense of the title he won from Roger Gutierrez, a belt he was allowed to keep after moving up to lightweight to challenge Gervonta Davis, a bout he lost on a ninth-round stoppage. Roach, an underdog in the betting making his first start in 16 months, had come up short in a previous world title fight, losing a decision to Jamel Herring in 2019.
Roach was trailing on two of the scorecards through 10 rounds in what had been a ho-hum fight. But he cranked up the juice in the homestretch, rocking Garcia in the 11th and flooring him with a right hook in the final stanza. Take away that knockdown (an illegal punch as it landed behind Roach’s head), and Garcia would have retained his belt with a draw.
Non-PPV
In his first start at 140 pounds, Puerto Rico’s Michel Rivera rebounded from his first pro loss (a wide decision at the hands of Frank Martin) with a unanimous 10-round decision over Sergey Lipinets. The judges had it 96-94 and 97-93 twice. Rivera, who improved to 25-1 (14) patterns his style and his persona after Muhammad Ali with whom he bears a strong facial resemblance.
It was the first fight in 16 months for the 34-year-old Lipinets (17-3-1), from SoCal via Kazakhstan. He rarely took a backward step but it wasn’t effective aggression.
In the opener on Showtime’s YouTube channel. 21-year-old super welterweight Vito Mielnicki Jr, now trained by Ronnie Shields, scored the best win of his career, advancing to 16-1 (11 KOs). The pride of Vineland, NJ, Mielnicki had Alexis Salazar on the canvas three times before the match was halted at the 2:27 mark of the opening stanza. Guadalajara’s Salazar (25-6) had been stopped only once previously.
Photo credit: Amanda Westcott / SHOWTIME
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