Jump to
Zach Arnold contributed to this report.
California Commission votes to approve Power Slap and Bare Knuckle Fighting
In a highly controversial move, the California State Athletic Commission (CSAC) has approved the sanctioning of Dana White’s Power Slap and the Bare Knuckle Fighting Championship (BKFC) in separate votes held today. The Power Slap vote, approved on a 6-0 basis, is a conditional license with Executive Officer Andy Foster working on writing and implementing rules & regulations for slap fighting.
The timing of this vote was highly unusual, coming on a Saturday morning, just before the much-anticipated Devin Haney boxing match at the Chase Center. Saturday’s athletic commission meeting was unavailable to the public in audio or video format.
As reported by Zach Arnold of Bloody Elbow, the CSAC’s agenda for the meeting was only revealed on November 29th. Arnold called it “a regulatory bomb.”
Bloody Elbow can report that both votes passed 6-0.
Dr. Vernon Williams, the Cedars-Sinai neurologist whose e-mail letter was used in meeting materials to support conditional licenses for both Bare Knuckle and Power Slap, was apparently not in attendance for Saturday’s vote.
Hunter Campbell, Chief Business Officer of UFC parent company TKO, appeared on behalf of Power Slap. The Athletic Commission cited the UFC as “the gold standard of regulation.”
One board member asked Mr. Campbell if there were plans to run Power Slap at the (now formerly Staples Center) Crypto Arena. Mr. Campbell revealed that the most likely scenario would involve a Friday night Power Slap event before a UFC event on a Saturday night. UFC 298 takes place in February 2024 at the Honda Center in Anaheim.
Nevada had been the only commission to sanction slap fighting
Before the California vote, only the Nevada State Athletic Commission had sanctioned Power Slap. Bare knuckle boxing had been sanctioned in 25 states as of April, 2023.
Slap Fighting has faced significant regulatory hurdles due to concerns about participant safety and regulatory standards. The CSAC’s vote not only paves the way for Power Slap competitions to be conducted in the state but will likely encourage other state commissions and boards to vote to sanction the sport.
As Arnold warned, “[this vote] could absolutely change the landscape of combat sports. One Golden State handshake could immediately skyrocket the value of the Power Slap franchise. Both Dana White and Hunter Campbell would be very happy with that development.
“Legalization of Power Slap would allow Endeavor to build enough momentum to steamroll the rest of the major US athletic commissions into giving slap fighting their own seal of approval. Once that happens, the possibility of book-ending Power Slap events on UFC and WWE event weeks in combination packages is officially on the table as part of Endeavor’s sold show suffocation strategy.”
Multiple sources told Bloody Elbow, on background, that once California fully grants a temporary license for sanctioning Power Slap, Texas appears to be the next domino to fall.
As Zach Arnold reported on the Bloody Elbow Substack newsletter in July, there were four major states that were viewed as regulatory targets to get Power Slap sanctioned: Texas, Tennessee, Florida, and California. California is now on the way to sanctioning Power Slap. Texas will likely be next. The other states will eventually fall in line. Only the Northeastern US athletic commissions may be able to put up a
semblance of a political fight.
Doctor advising the CSAC: ‘no red flags’
As Bloody Elbow reported last year, many health professionals have expressed serious concerns about the safety of slap fighting.
Neurologist Dr. Nitin Sethi said, “Open-handed slaps delivered with such force to the opponent’s 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.”
“I disagree with the argument that better medical supervision of this ‘sport’ shall make it safer,” Dr. Sethi continued. “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.”
This is in dramatic contrast to the opinion of Dr. Vernon B. Williams, the director of the Center for Sports Neurology & Pain Medicine at the Cedars-Sinai Kerlan-Jobe Institute who wrote in a memo to the CSAC that, “My review of the limited information on experience to date regarding Health & Safety of Power Slap events is that there are no ‘Red Flags’ that would absolutely contraindicate a trial, and I would support that process as well.”
Erik Magkraken added some interesting tweets as well:
NSAC has warned of ‘wild west’ of drug test failures
In May, NSAC chairman Anthony Marnell said, “This (the number of drug test failures) reminds me of the early days of the wild, wild west of drug issues. I haven’t seen this kind of proliferation for quite some time.” Marnell said before addressing the growth of slap fighting and his worries that the NSAC is seeing “a lot of emerging, unknown athletes that are coming out of the woodwork… Any time something like this starts to have real money in it, which it is going to have real money in it, more than we can probably imagine, people will come out of the woodwork everywhere to try to get their share of the one-night gig, and we saw that days in the early UFC.”