Why Fight Fans Don’t Like Slap Fighting
If you think this isn’t a real sport, boy are you in for a whirlwind.
Warning, links in this article contain people standing still as an open palm strike nukes their heads into oblivion.
I equate slap fighting to people who attempt to cross the train tracks with the lights blaring and the barrier in front.
Like why did you try to cross, bro?
Why The Hate
I can’t narrow down hate to a single reason to encompass everyone’s opinion. However, most issues stem from chasing the excitement of the knockout without the build-up, speculation, or intrigue.
Knockouts/knockdowns are beautiful because they don’t happen in every fight in combat sports like kickboxing, boxing, MMA, Muay Thai, etc. It’s not a guarantee that a knockout will occur in a row which brings excitement to it when it does happen.
For example, if every hit on baseball was a homerun or double, would those be exciting events in a game?
No, it would die down. There’s a reason the homerun derby is only a one-off event.
The wonder of what’s going to happen looms in people’s heads. Would people buy PPVs of +700 underdogs if the outcome was 100% certain? It only happens because we’ve seen Douglas vs. Tyson, which puts a seed of doubt it’s a fight is a foregone conclusion.
Slap fighting doesn’t offer the same experience. I’m watching two people stand there and see who can withstand punishment and slap harder. Maybe some skill is involved in learning to hit a defenseless person harder, but who cares? Everyone knows the outcome is someone getting fucked up with an extremely high chance of a KO or TKO.
I can’t speculate about any strategies and techniques a fighter might employ. Fuck, Francis Ngannou deciding to wrestle in a fight ended up becoming a huge story, even though it was pretty uneventful grappling afterward.
This shit comes down to “I hope he wins the coin toss to go first” or a competitor being “built differently.”
In short, fights are a gamble of whether they’re entertaining or not. What makes it exciting is appreciating a good fight you find engaging after seeing a fair share of shit. Otherwise, it becomes tiresome knowing some trucker from Indiana is about to get melted because it’s their chance to become famous for combat.
Thanks for the read.
