Who owns Power Slap?

Power Slap is one of the most unconventional combat sports promotions to emerge in recent years. Despite widespread criticism, the sight of heavily built competitors standing toe-to-toe and trading open-handed blows has proven oddly compelling to a niche audience.

Among slap-fighting events, Power Slap is widely regarded as the most prominent. The organization was founded in 2022 and is owned by Dana White, the longtime president of the Ultimate Fighting Championship, who has positioned the promotion as an experimental offshoot of his combat sports empire.

Still in its infancy, Power Slap remains a minor player as it searches for a sustainable and marketable identity. While its long-term future is uncertain, White has remained committed to growing the promotion and pushing it further into the mainstream.

What is Power Slap?

Power Slap is a competitive slap-fighting league where participants take turns delivering open-handed strikes to each other’s faces, aiming to knock their opponent off balance or out.

Beyond the spectacle, the promotion focuses on clear-cut structure and rules, including weight classes, referees, and medical oversight, setting it apart from informal slap contests.

The event began to gain traction in 2023 when it produced a reality TV series called Power Slap: Road to the Title with 8 pre-recorded episodes before venturing into live events.

How is Power Slap different than other slap-fighting competitions?

Power Slap is marked by Dana White’s signaturestyle of taking a fairly niche sport and organizing it in a way that attracts attention.

White is effectively bringing a tried-and-tested method for popularizing niche sports by creating a consistent structure, scheduling events, and hyping fans to have something to look forward to.

This differs from most slap-fighting contests simply because they are organized more as a grassroots event, rather than a league-style competition. This has further boosted the popularity of slap-fighting as well.

White has also responded to critics about the safety issues around Power Slap, arguing that the event has created clear rules and oversight to ensure the well-being of participants. Among the most significant achievements in creating structured sports are the introduction of:

• Weight classes
• Medical staff on-site
• Trained referees
• Clear no-contest rules

All told, Power Slap is the first established effort to see slap-fighting become a mainstream contest. White’s experience in directing the UFC and his ability to build media ties and partnerships have been another boon to the still-nascent promotion, which clearly sets it apart from local and other similar organizations.

Why has Power Slap been criticized so heavily?

Power Slap has naturally come under fire from skeptics, who argue that the format is riskier than boxing and MMA. The main issue lies in the core premise of the contest - by allowing contestants absorb unblocked hits to the head, they are exposed to various long-term health complications.

Further rebuke is drawn from the fact that most contestants are not believed to be adequately compensated in relation to the potential health risks they run, including but not limited to neurologic damage and long-term brain trauma. Such issues have already been exposed in the NFL, largely credited to the activist work of forensic neuropathologist Bennet Omalu.

For his part, Dana White has strongly disagreed with much of this. In an interview with Nina Drama, a prominent UFC personality, White said that Power Slap is safer than boxing. Specifically, he argued that a slap contestant would take anything between 3 and 5 slaps per event, whereas a boxer would absorb anything between 300 and 400 punches per fight.

He called the criticism rooted in a lack of education, and said that Power Slap was investing a lot to ensure that only healthy people get into fights.

Can Power Slap become mainstream?

Dana White once told the Fertitta brothers to go ahead and purchase a down-on-its-luck fighting promotion. The brothers secured the league for $2m, and subsequently saw it grow exponentially.

In 2025, this same league signed a $7.7bn contract with Paramount+, and yes - it is the UFC we are talking about. Spearheaded by White, the UFC is the best-valued fighting promotion in MMA.

White has clearly demonstrated that he knows how to take niche sports and usher it into the mainstream, which is precisely what he is attempting to do with Power Slap.

In a press conference in 2023, Dana White took a question from a journalist about the future of Power Slap and argued that the contest was already "number one in sports" so far as social media numbers went.

White also noted that the Power Slap was further along in its development compared to where the UFC had been historically, and dismissed media speculation as "the media doesn’t matter."

In other words, White is pushing to flesh out Power Slap as a serious mainstream competition, but whether he succeeds would take time to determine.

Image credit: Power Slap