Slap Dance

It looks like Lon Chaney was ahead of his time.

Several years ago, I went to Prospect Park to see an outdoor screening of a Lon Chaney movie called “He Who Gets Slapped.”

The 1924 silent film tells the rather bizarre story a man who is so shattered by his wife’s betrayal that he becomes a circus clown whose act consists solely of being slapped and abused by 60 of his floppy-shoed co-workers.

It’s supposed to be a classic, but it was late, I was hungry, and I didn’t much feel like sitting through this battered Bozo story. So, I bailed.

I had pretty forgotten the movie entirely until Friday when I caught some footage on YouTube of something called Power Slap.

For those of you who have never heard of it, well, first of all, consider yourself lucky.

Power Slap is a…sport?...freak show?...where two competitors face each other and, after a coin toss to decide who goes first, one of them hauls off and slaps the other one right across the face.

Then it’s the other person’s turn to lay down the smack—assuming they haven't been bitch-slapped into oblivion.

Those being slapped may not flinch, raise their shoulder or tuck in their chins. They just stand there and take it.

And if that doesn't give you a Catholic school flashback, nothing will.

I used to be a big fan of combat sports--boxing, kickboxing, and, later on, mixed martial arts. But now that I'm older, and perhaps a little bit smarter, I don't particularly enojoy watching young people giving each other brain damage while a stadium full of wannabe tough guy ghouls cheers them on.

But at least in these sports, the combatants defend themselves with blocking, ducking, slipping and footwork. The basic lesson of boxing is to hit without getting hit.

Power Slap, on the other hand--yeah, I said it--is just full-on abuse.

The only skill—if you want to call it that—is the ability to absorb extreme punishment and having enough of your marbles intact to return the favor.

Gosh, someone should make a movie about this. Oh, wait…

I hate to be the old geezer in the room who starts every other sentence with “Back in my day…” and ends up saying something about the world going to hell in a handbasket, but when I look at something like this I’m not sure what else to say.

I don’t doubt the participants’ courage or toughness. Just their sanity. And the ability to withstand pain in the moment doesn't matter much in the long term.

Talk to the hand

In fact, it probably makes things worse since people who ignore the agony tend to increase the injury. You keep on telling yourself you can take it until the day comes when you can't rememeber where you live.

Power Slap is owned by Dana White, the Trump-loving CEO of the UFC, which isn't terribly surpring.

There was an event scheduled in January but it was delayed a week after White was recorded slapping his wife at a New Year’s Eve party.

Yes, exactly.

Greek neurologist Nikolas Evangelou called the show a "recipe for disaster" due to how "impact to the head, from an angle, can cause rotational forces on the brain", leading to "hopefully temporary, but sometimes permanent disruption to brain function" and "even more serious complications".

Boxer and WBC champion, Ryan Garcia, wrote "Power slap is a horrible idea and it needs to be stopped."

For their part, the show producers said, "We spend the money to make sure we have two healthy people in there, proper medical attention during and after the fight. These are the things we need to educate people on, just like we needed to educate people on mixed martial arts."

And the always eloquent Dana White declared "If you don't fucking like it, don't watch it."

There are other slap fighting events, with competitions such as the PunchDown gala in Poland that ended up with the death of a fighter.

Slap fighting could fizzle out and end up being a trivia question in a few years and writing about it probably gives this lunacy more attention than it deserves. But the fact that it exists in the first place is disturbing. Part of me is wondering what's next after this, but, honestly, I'd rather not know.

I did a little searching and I found that "He Who Gets Slapped" has been posted on YouTube, so I can watch it anytime I get the urge.

I doubt if that will be anytime soon.