Power Slap Is Stupid: Ranking the Dumbest Combat Sports
I’ve seen a lot of combat sports in my time, but recently I’ve come across some that make me question humanity’s collective decision-making. These aren’t martial arts. They’re not even sports in any meaningful sense. They’re spectacles designed to maximize damage while eliminating the one thing that makes fighting an art: defense.
In legitimate combat sports like Sanda, MMA, or boxing, there’s an entire tactical dimension built around avoiding damage. Slipping punches, checking kicks, sprawling takedowns — these are skills that take years to develop. The sports I’m about to rank have stripped all of that away.
Let me walk you through the dumbest combat sports I’ve ever seen, ranked from bad to absolutely brain-dead.
#1 Power Slap: Maximum Brain Damage as Entertainment
Slap fighting is exactly what it sounds like: two people take turns slapping each other in the face as hard as possible until someone gets knocked out, quits, or the judges determine a winner.
The biggest league is Power Slap, created by Dana White and the slap fighting phenomenon and somehow sanctioned by the Nevada State Athletic Commission. I have to ask — isn’t the commission supposed to protect people?
How It Works
Two competitors stand on opposite sides of a table. There’s a coin toss to determine who slaps first. Matches can go up to 10 rounds, but most end in three. Each slapper has 60 seconds to set up and deliver their strike.
The rules specify:
- Must use a flat, open hand with palm and fingers making contact
- Must declare which hand (right or left) before striking
- Must select a windup level (1, 2, or 3)
- Target area is below the eye, above the chin, on the side of the face
- The defender cannot flinch, raise shoulders, or touch their chin
- 60 seconds to recover after being slapped
The defender must hold a towel behind their back to prevent the natural instinct to protect yourself. Let that sink in — they physically restrain you from defending yourself.
Why It’s Completely Stupid
This is maximum possible brain damage as entertainment. Slap fighting eliminates the single most important aspect of combat: your defense.
In boxing, MMA, or wrestling, you can block, slip, parry, counter. Your threat of countering limits how much your opponent can wind up. But here? You just stand there and take it.
If you watch Power Slap, you’ll regularly see competitors exhibit the fencing response — arms stiffening, body going rigid. These are clear signs of neurological trauma. This is brain injury happening in real time, packaged as entertainment.
We know repetitive head trauma causes CTE, dementia, memory loss, personality changes, and early death. Power Slap accelerates this process by removing any pretense of self-preservation. Medical experts have been vocal about the dangers, but the show goes on.
The competitors in Power Slap are tough. I’m not questioning their toughness. But toughness without technique isn’t a martial art — it’s just punishment. And the long-term consequences are devastating. Studies on football players, boxers, and MMA fighters have shown what repetitive brain trauma does over decades. Power Slap concentrates that damage into a format where there’s literally zero mitigation.
My verdict: I hate it. I thought it would be a flash in the pan, but it’s still here.
#2 Run It Straight: Weaponized CTE
Run It Straight is a collision sport where two people sprint directly at each other with the objective of bashing into the other guy. No protective equipment. No helmets. Just two people running full force into one another.
The sport originated in Melbourne, Australia less than two years ago and has since spread to Auckland, Dubai, and beyond. Prize pools go up to $200,000 for championships.
How It Works
The arena is 20 meters long by 4 meters wide. One person carries a ball, one is the tackler. Both sprint toward each other from opposite ends. The impact is unavoidable and intentional.
Safety measures? Soft shoes. That’s it. Ambulance crews stand by.
Why It’s Monumentally Stupid
This sport is only two years old and a teenager has already died. In May 2025, a 19-year-old from New Zealand died after being critically injured playing a tackling game based on Run It Straight.
At the Melbourne final, at least two competitors were knocked completely unconscious from head-on collisions. The Concussion Legacy Federation Australia’s executive director said: “I cannot believe we’ve got this competition which is encouraging people to run towards each other to knock each other out.”
The name of the sport is literally “Run It Straight” — as in, don’t avoid the hit. The battlefield is narrow to ensure collision. The rules reward violent contact.
Think about what football, rugby, and even MMA have spent decades trying to reduce: uncontrolled head-on collisions. The NFL has spent billions on concussion protocols. Rugby has introduced head injury assessments. And here comes Run It Straight, making the collision the entire point, with zero protective equipment.
I can’t defend this one. There’s one teenager dead already. Medical professionals are begging for it to be banned.
#3 Low Leg Kick Championship: Slap Fighting for Your Legs
Low Kick Championship is a competition where two fighters stand in fixed positions and take turns kicking each other’s outer thighs as hard as possible until someone quits or cannot continue.
It’s slap fighting, but for your legs.
How It Works
- Fighters face each other with front foot planted in a designated zone
- Only low kicks to the outer thigh are allowed (above knee, below hip)
- Defender cannot lift their leg to check the kick
- First round is 10 minutes, second round is 5 minutes
- Winner determined by who quits or accumulates most damage
The Damage
Imagine the catastrophic injuries: quad contusions, hematomas from blood pooling inside muscle, muscle tears, nerve damage, compartment syndrome (when swelling cuts off blood flow requiring emergency surgery), and bone bruises on the femur.
That’s 15 minutes of unchecked kicks — probably more than you’d absorb in any Muay Thai or MMA match because at least in Muay Thai you can check the kicks. Checking a leg kick — lifting your shin to deflect the blow — is one of the most fundamental skills in striking martial arts. Low Kick Championship outlaws it.
The medical implications are serious. Compartment syndrome can lead to amputation if not treated quickly. Repeated trauma to the same muscle causes progressive damage that doesn’t fully heal between events. Fighters are essentially volunteering for cumulative permanent injury.
Honorable Mentions: More Dumb Combat Sports
These three aren’t the only offenders. The world of questionable combat entertainment runs deep:
Felony Fights — An underground series from the mid-2000s that pitted convicted felons against each other in bareknuckle brawls. No rules, no weight classes, no medical personnel. It was filmed and sold on DVD. The whole thing was eventually shut down, but the footage lives on as a dark chapter in combat sports history.
Bum Fights — Even worse than Felony Fights. This exploitative series paid homeless people to fight each other and perform dangerous stunts. The creator was eventually arrested. This wasn’t even a sport — it was exploitation packaged as entertainment.
Headbutt Championships — Yes, these exist. Competitors take turns headbutting each other until someone quits. If you thought slap fighting was bad for your brain, imagine the same concept but with your skull.
What Makes a Combat Sport Stupid?
My criteria for why any martial art or adjacent sport is idiotic:
- Zero defensive options — You cannot evade, block, or counter
- Mandatory damage absorption — You must take the full force of every blow
- Rewards damage over skill — Whoever’s body can take more punishment wins
- No path to mastery — There’s no technique to refine over a lifetime
- Disproportionate risk to reward — The potential injuries far exceed any reasonable compensation
There is strategy in these sports. There is heart and conditioning. But they lack the evasive maneuvers that represent the art in martial arts. To hit and avoid being hit — that’s the art. That’s what separates Laamb, Muay Thai, wrestling, and BJJ from these spectacles.
As fans of MMA, our hands aren’t completely clean. There’s CTE and brain damage in legitimate combat sports too. But at least there are protocols to mitigate it — referee stoppages, medical suspensions, weight classes, and rules designed to prevent unnecessary damage. These sports take the worst parts of combat and make them the entire point.
The rise of social media has accelerated the trend. These sports thrive on viral knockout clips. A 15-second Power Slap knockout gets millions of views on TikTok, which drives viewership, which drives sponsorship money, which keeps the machine running — regardless of the human cost.
Maybe I’m just an old man yelling at clouds, but I think the kids need to stop doing this. And the commissions that sanction these events need to take a hard look at what they’re enabling.
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