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There’s been a lot of buzz around Dana White’s Power Slap promotion lately, all thanks to a big marketing push during the week leading up to Super Bowl Sunday. During an interview with the Full Send Podcast (one of White’s preferred outlets to give interviews), the conversation landed on Power Slap’s future and what kind of expansion they intended to do. White says that sometime this year, Power Slap will be headed out of the country so that the slappers from other countries that can’t get into the USA can compete, particularly Russia.
Dana White talks Power Slap expansion
Before talk got to the subject of taking Power Slap on the road, White did a little chest-pounding, bragging about how huge and massive his concussion machine has become, very much the slap-happy pappy that Nate Wilcox refers to him as from time to time.
“There were venues that wouldn’t take us. That’s how our relationship started with Trump. Venues didn’t even want it. Now we’re breaking every f—cking venue record in the world and uh, yeah, Power Slap is f—cking huge. We just got a valuation on Power Slap. It’s f—cking massive.”
One of the questions asked of the UFC CEO was if there was any way to expand the sport’s rule set “outside of just two guys slapping each other and falling over and over again” to which Dana replied,
“I don’t know how the sport’s going to evolve. Right now, when you look at season one, when we did the first season of the reality show, guys came in, and these guys were doing this for free. Now, guys are f—cking paying off their houses and f—cking paying off their cars and throwing money in the bank and taking care of their families.
So, once money like that starts to come in, it starts to evolve real f—cking fast, meaning these guys that did it for free are now making a bunch of money. They didn’t used to train, now they’re training, they’re taking it serious, and once that starts to happen, you can see the best thing.”
He enthusiastically continued on about his creation, as proud as a new father with a bouncing slap baby to show all his pals back at the mill—the fighter mill. He completely forgot to mention that those big paydays were discretionary and not the norm. As a matter of fact, the entry level purse is just $2K/$2K, as UFC veteran Eric Spicely revealed on social media. But I digress, let’s get back to Papa Slap selling the dream to the world.
“This is what we do, we take these f—cking sports that people don’t realize have a ton of potential globally—and this thing is big all over the f—cking world. Big, big, big. The numbers that it pulls and the social numbers that it pulls…We’re getting sanctioned in another five or six states this year, and I’m doing one out of the country this year too.
So, when we do this one out of the country, I’ll be able to get all these guys in from Russia and these other countries that aren’t allowed to come into the United States right now, and we’ll put on a massive f—cking event. But this is all sh—t that I haven’t announced yet.”
Donald Cerrone gives CTE two thumbs up
Just for good measure, I’m going to add Donald Cerrone’s ringing endorsement for Power Slap from this past week. Another of UFC’s new preferred media, Nina-Marie Daniele, gave “Cowboy” the mic to talk up Power Slap. The UFC veteran caused many a jaw to drop with what he said.
“If you wanna see knockout after knockout, knockout, knockout, and hear CTE brain damage, this is the event.”
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