One of the biggest and fasting growing sports in the county involves a person slapping their opponent as hard as they can in an effort to knock them out.
The first study on the effects of Slap Fighting or Power Slap was recently conducted the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine Neurological Surgery.
The study looked at signs of trauma in the slap fighting competitors.
The results were published in JAMA Surgery and so concussions are a big concern.
“Slap fighting may be entertaining to watch as a lay viewer, but as medical professionals, we found some aspects of the competitions to be quite concerning,” said lead author Raj Swaroop Lavadi, postdoctoral research fellow at Pitt’s neurosurgery department. “Our end goal is to make all professional sports safer for the neurologic health of the athletes. It is really difficult to ban any sport, but it is possible to raise awareness about the associated harms. We were intrigued with the prospect of applying video analysis to identify signs of concussion in a competition that hasn’t previously been studied.”
Experts watched videos of slap fights and analyzed over 330 slaps, finding “visible signs of concussions.”
Those signs ranged from “a diminished awareness of the environment to a complete loss of responsiveness.”
The study shows that over half of those slapped show “visible signs of concussion.”
More from the study:
By the end of their matches, nearly 40% of sequences resulted in signs of poor motor coordination, about a third of the sequences resulted in participants having a blank and vacant look, and a quarter of the sequences featured participants who were slow to get up after being brought down by a blow. Nearly 80% of the fighters demonstrated a visible sign of concussion at least once in the series of matches.
Slap fights typically go three rounds. A coin toss decides who goes first.
After the first slap, the competitor has a minute to recovery and deliver their own slap.
Fights can end in a knockout, technical knockout or, if it goes the whole match, judges decide who won by looking at slap effectiveness, reaction, time it takes for someone slapped to recovery and more.
You can learn more about the study here.