To most, combat sports like boxing and mixed martial arts are sufficiently dangerous. The potential for permanent injuries or fatalities notwithstanding, violence alone is more than enough to turn off much of the public.

At the very least, fighters can limit these hazards by blocking or evading their opponents’ strikes.

But for those who see such tactics as cowardly, there is slap fighting, the fledgling pay-per-view competition that has changed the math on combat sports by eliminating defense entirely.

It’s not an overly sophisticated concept: Two combatants stand nearly toe-to-toe on opposite sides of a barrel before alternately slapping each other across the face until one is knocked out, concedes defeat, or the judges declare a victor.

The catch is that there is no way to mitigate the abuse. Combatants are forbidden from moving, deflecting, or doing anything more than flinching as they’re being cracked across the face.

‘You don’t have to worry about training for defensive purposes because you just got to stand there and accept it,’ a former MMA fighter-turned-slap champion known as ‘Wolverine’ told DailyMail.com. ‘As long as you got a good chin, to me, you’ll be fine.’

‘Fine,’ in this case, is relative. Even the hulking Wolverine admits to being temporarily disfigured by the sport, which he considers more punishing than MMA.

‘Depending on how far you go [in a bout], the next day your face is swollen,’ he said, adding that the swelling makes it difficult to enjoy smokeless tobacco. ‘Hell, I can’t even put a dip in on that side of my face.’

Slap fighting’s euphemistic name belies its inherent risks. Competitors aren’t pawing at each other like declawed felines or Hollywood actors at the Oscars, but are instead putting their often-considerable mass behind each offering.

‘If I feel like if I’ve [blacked] out for a second, I know that’s probably going to cause a concussion,’ slap fighter Frank ‘The Tank’ told DailyMail.com.

The sport was first popularized two years ago in Eastern Europe with a series of viral videos starring 370-pound Russian sensation Vasiliy Khamotiskiy. 

Known as ‘Dumpling,’ Khamotiskiy was seen in one video knocking a massive opponent unconscious to win 30,000 rubles, which was about $475 at the time. Other viral videos show Dumpling training by squashing watermelons and flipping tractor tires.

The social media exposure helped grow the sport into a pay-per-view event, but things turned tragic in October of 2021 when a Polish slap fighter and body builder named Artur ‘Waluś’ Walczak was knocked down four times and suffered a cerebral hemorrhage at a ‘Punchdown’ event in Wrocław, Poland. The 46-year-old was taken to the hospital, placed in a medically induced coma, and ultimately died in November from multi-organ failure, according to Polish reports. 

In the aftermath, Polish authorities launched an investigation into the safety conditions for competitors at Punchdown 5, while promoters insisted that Walczak’s health remained highest priority after his fourth and final knockdown. 

‘The competitor [Walczak] remained aware, but the disturbing neurological symptoms observed by the rescuers prompted them to call the ambulance service,’ read a statement from Punchdown. 

A group spokesman told DailyMail.com that the promotion is not considered a suspect in the investigation.  

Punchdown has since changed its name to Slap Fighting Championship, not to be confused with SlapFight Championship, a Missouri-based outfit that hopes to repair the sport’s reputation following the Walzcak tragedy. 

‘Now the Polish slap fans are furious and there aren’t a lot of fans left in Eastern Europe,’ said JT Tilley, a veteran combat sport promoter who founded SlapFight Championship. ‘And you can’t blame them, really, because that’s a horrible thing.’

He isn’t just a promoter, but an aspiring reformer as well. The owner of the Branson (Missouri) Fight Club gym is hoping to establish stricter safety protocols for the largely unregulated sport before irresponsible and unscrupulous promoters force states to outlaw it entirely.

Tilley’s SlapFight Championship has strict weight classes and events are just seven or 10 rounds in order to limit punishment to competitors, all of whom wear mouth guards and ear protection in the form of cotton balls. Just as importantly, fight doctors have the power to stop bouts, all of which take place on a thick foam pad to cushion any falls. 

There’s also detailed restrictions on slapping to prevent combatants from getting their eyes gouged or being bludgeoned with the heel of the palm. Furthermore, SlapFight has a three-knockdown limit, a 60-day suspension for combatants following each competition, and a 90-day suspension for anyone who gets knocked out.

‘People will think of it as probably the most extreme and dangerous thing,’ said Tilley. ‘But what they won’t realize is that they’ll be an ambulance and an EMT and a medical doctor and three judges and two sanctioning representatives [at an event]. And so we do try to keep it really safe, but we give the appearance of just a really, really dangerous sport.’

Fortunately, Tilley said, SlapFight Championship yet to suffer any major injuries. 

The promotion’s safety protocols stand in stark contrast to rival slap fighting competitions in Europe, where critics have questioned the effectiveness – and the mere existence – of any drug testing.

To Tilley, a safer atmosphere in the US has helped to legitimize the sport.

‘Nobody was really taking [the sport] very seriously, but the more I watched it, the more I realized that if you did it right, you could see a tremendous battle of wills,’ said Tilley, who began promoting SlapFight Championship events in 2019. ‘If you just put two guys in there that were the same size and you put some rules in place to keep them from getting brain injuries, I thought, ”Man, maybe everyone would want to watch that as much as I would.”’

Tilley appears to be right. Not only has SlapFight Championship drawn more than 500 million views on social media and YouTube, but the promoter has inked broadcast deals in India, Germany, Italy, Southeast Asia and with FITE TV in the US.

Other American-based organizers have followed that lead, including Arnold Schwarzenegger and YouTuber-turned-boxer Logan Paul, who partnered with Slap Fighting Championship to promote an event at the retired body builder’s annual sports festival in Columbus, Ohio. 

‘I love the absurdity of it,’ Paul told USA Today ahead of the March 5 event. ‘I love the idea that two guys could just stand across from each other and just slap each other and see who falls down first. It’s hilarious to me. It’s like, how is that a real event? What the f*** is that sport?’ 

Paul struck a more serious tone in a promo, calling slap fighting ‘one of the most entertaining’ and ‘fastest growing’ combat sports. 

Schwarzenegger said he agreed to include slap fighting at the 2022 Arnold Sports Festival after seeing the crowd reaction at previous events: ‘I thought it was a great idea, because I saw it on video and social media and I thought the audience was extremely enthusiastic.’

Conversely, Tilley’s SlapFight Championship isn’t selling any tickets, but that’s by design.  

As he explained, much of the sport’s growth occurred during the pandemic, which forced competitions away from big crowds and into private facilities, like abandoned warehouses. That not only added to the atmosphere, creating a bit of an outlaw vibe, but also served as a sobering influence on other promoters.

By forgoing ticket sales and even gambling revenue – at least for the time being – Tilley believes he is disincentivizing rivals who might otherwise try to cash in on slap fighting’s surging popularity.

‘We don’t sell tickets and have big overstated shows because we feel like that’s just gonna draw more promoters into the sport before it’s developed,’ Tilley said.

Adding some mystery, Tilley’s fighters compete under stage names, which serves two purposes: It prevents rival promoters from identifying and poaching SlapFight’s talent, and it helps to attract younger fans, who enjoy the wrestling-style showmanship.

SlapFight Championship’s diverse roster of slappers includes White Simba, Solid Slug, Hardcore Hillbilly, Shamokin Thunder Clap, and Darius the Destroyer, all of whom are as colorful as their nicknames.

Female slap fighting exists, but it’s difficult to find women competitors with similar size and strength to face off in a bout. And not wanting to create any uneven or unsafe matchups, SlapFight Championship has focused primarily on men’s competition.

However, other promoters have embraced women slap fights, albeit as more of a sexualized side show.

‘It’s kind of demeaning to a woman,’ Tilley said. ‘The women that have competed in our shows in the past… we don’t treat them any differently than the men. But in other slap shows, they do things like having them slap each other on their ass. And then they have them make out after they fight and stuff. We just really don’t want any part of misogyny like that.’

Prize money isn’t disclosed publicly (Tilley said he’s trying to dissuade greedy would-be fighters from competing for the wrong reasons), but suffice to say, it’s not enough for the slappers to quit their day jobs.

Wolverine, for instance, still drives a lumber truck from 5am until 5pm and doubts he’ll ever become a household name.

‘I’m just a normal guy,’ he said. ‘I just compete; just enjoy the sport.’

Meanwhile Frank the Tank, a popular fighter known as the People’s Champion, said he was recognized a few times at an amusement park in Missouri last year: ‘I thought it was pretty cool to have someone know me like that.’

Like many of their rivals, Wolverine and Frank are succeeding at slap fighting after first trying their hands (and feet, elbows, and knees) in MMA. The sports have obvious commonalities, but without any need for defense, grappling skills or cardio, slap fighting improves Wolverine and Frank’s odds considerably.

‘My ability to do [slap fighting] is a lot better,’ said Frank, who first entered the sport four years ago after being hospitalized with severe pneumonia.

‘I was on an inhaler and couldn’t do very much cardio stuff anymore,’ he said. ‘It basically killed my lungs.’

Tilley, who already knew Frank through MMA circles, invited the heavyweight to try his hand at slap fighting, and Frank hasn’t looked back.

His family was understandably less enthusiastic, at least initially.

‘I think at first they thought it was kind of like crazy, kind of like anybody,’ he said. ”Why are you doing this? This is dumb.”’

Now, though, he says he has their full backing, as well as his girlfriend’s and her relatives’.

‘They support it, I think, because of how good I am at it and how successful I’ve been,’ he said.

Natural-born slappers are hard to come by. According to Frank and Wolverine, hand size and arm length aren’t overly important, so long as one can reach across the barrel and cleanly strike opponents across their cheek.

Training certainly helps, even if there aren’t any defensive techniques to learn. For instance, Wolverine practices by targeting a slapping pad that corresponds to the height of his next opponent.

The best trait for slappers is the will to endure a succession of clean shots to the face, which become increasingly punishing in later rounds.

‘It’s just kind of like the determination to continue,’ Frank said. ‘It’s just willpower.’

The sport’s machismo has an obvious appeal to anyone with a chip on their shoulder.  

‘I’ve always had a lot of aggression,’ Frank said. ‘I mean, I calmed down the older I got, but there’s still that thought [when] you meet those people throughout life… ”Man, I really wish I could just hit that person.”’

Curiously, slap fighting seems to diffuse that aggression rather than reinforce it.

Fighters often talk about their mutual respect for one another, while some give opponents a congratulatory handshake after receiving a particularly punishing blow. And even when their battles do veer into personal animosity, the sport offers a way to resolve those disputes.

Tilley recalls a recent event in which two opponents took issue with one another before their bout.

‘It was kind of like a pro wrestling thing where they were pushing each,’ he said. ‘And we realized right before the fights that it was serious; these guys hated each other.’

But before the tension could boil over into a closed-fisted fight, they started slapping each other and the friction naturally dissipated.

‘That’s one of the fascinating things about SlapFight,’ Tilley said. ‘They start developing respect for each other. And then at the end of their fight, no matter who the winner is, they’re hugging and apologizing. And it is such fascinating dichotomy with that.’

To Frank, though, slap fighting is more joyous than therapeutic. He’s not doing it to conquer personal demons or compensate for anything.

He just loves slapping dudes.

‘I’m very happy now,’ he said. ‘I don’t really have that aggression anymore, but the enjoyment of it still is there.’