aesculapian professional are upset that an increasingly popular fighting sport , known as slap combat , could be leaving contestants brainiac damaged .
Slap fighting is essentially what it says on the can . Competitors in this for the most part underground tight - paced sport take turns to strike one another with full force across the face with open hand . The achiever is the one who has either secured enough point at the end of a series of exchanges or is the last individual tolerate . Points are give based on how much damage a slap has delivered and how well a participant has coped with being struck .
Unlike other combat sport , slap fighters do not wear any headdress to protect themselves . They must receive their opposite ’s strike without ducking or trying to guard themselves . Even recoil is considered afoul .
In January 2023 , the sport was televised for the first time by Power Slap , a promotional caller owned by Dana White , the chief executive officer of Ultimate Fighting Championship ( UFC ) .
Since then , the sport has become increasingly popular and has started to spread from the US to other countries . The UK will be host itsfirst - everHeavyweight Slap Fight Competition in Liverpool in October this year .
Although it is watch by many people eager to see one person attempt to dispatch another person ’s side with the thenar of their hand , some viewers – general members of the public and medical force alike – have raised concerns about the challenger ’s wellness . And there is good reasonableness for this .
In 2021 , the Polish smacking hero Artur Walczak suffered a bleed on the brain during a slap lucifer that he was literally knocked out of . Although he received hospital care , the competitor die a few weeks subsequently from multiple organ failure get by the headland injury .
The promotional telecasting for Power Slap show several dissenter exhibiting clear signs of concussion . According to a squad of neurologists at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine , there has not yet been any effort to quantify the concussion risk associated with this sport .
To address this , Dr Raj Swaroop Lavadi , Dr Nitin Agarwal , and colleagues assessed 78 on-line videos of slap battle catch for grounds of concussions on player ' faces . They bump that more than half of the participant showed seeable star sign of concussion . Many participants also had sign of vitiate motion after they were hit or had vacuous or vacant face , and others experienced bother standing back up after falling from a smasher .
“ The findings of this cross - sectional study suggest that smacking fighting may get traumatic brain injury in contestants , with potential for long - condition consequence , ” the writer write .
“ The danger is further augmented given that the dissenter must stand defenseless , allowing their opponents to achieve complete and exact contact with their heads during each loathsome blow . ”
The squad argue that there must be a high level of surveillance when valuate player ’s during and be matches .
Of naturally , the cogitation has its limitations . It bank on a small sample size , while assess signs of concussion through video analysis could be a subjective agency of assessment . To overwhelm this latter emergence , the researchers made sure agreements to avert single bias .
“ Slap fighting may be a more grievous armed combat sport than antecedently assumed , and strategy to foreclose neurological death among its participant should be follow up on , ” the squad conclude .
The discipline is published inJAMA Surgery .
