Reflecting on an Applied Study with The Meliorist WrittenbyDalyUnger

I am a procrastinator, a notorious deadline-pusher, and a hyper fixator. I can hardly maintain the due dates assigned to me by my professors, so it only makes sense that I would pioneer my own course in which I am solely responsible for my education. Awfully ambitious of me, I know. Applied studies are an excellent way to meet your degree requirements while conducting an exercise in academic independence. You draft your own syllabus and coordinate with professors and employers to create a course that will challenge you and provide you with on-the-job experience in a field related to your degree. Many students complete applied studies off-campus. However, I found myself uniquely positioned to become part of The Meliorist staff for the Spring 2023 semester in an investigative writing role.

My experience writing for The Meliorist began in the Fall of 2022 when my interest in the Russo-Ukrainian war put me in contact with a family of refugees arriving in southern Alberta. I wrote an article for The Meliorist detailing efforts that indi-viduals in Lethbridge and the surrounding area are making to bring refugees here. I shared the story of the Syrotin family, who had fled war-torn Mariupol in search of safety in southern Alberta. It was a passion project, a self-motivated effort to shed light on the people around us saving lives, and a story that I hoped would make Ukraine feel a little closer to the University of Lethbridge.

From that freelance article, I discovered the applied studies program, and eventually, my writing position here. I had few expectations going in. I figured that my experience with academic writing would give me an upper hand. In reality, I had bitten off more than I expected. When asked to write a reflection on my time with The Meliorist, I found myself thinking about who I would recommend this opportunity to. Being a writer left no room for my procrastination and deadline-pushing tendencies. I was required to make and meet goals in a timely manner. Additionally, writing investigative pieces for a publication differs entirely from academic writing. Instead of long days in the library, I found myself knocking on doors, making phone calls, following leads, and being a general nuisance in my search for interviews and statements.

It proved to be a rewarding experience for me, though a great challenge. So, would I recommend an applied study with The Meliorist? Yes, although not to everyone. I learned a lot of valuable lessons about journalistic practices and ethics, the behind-thescenes of a publication, and about my own ability as a writer. The people I would recommend this opportunity to are those who can see themselves being passionate about a story, who can overcome their procrastination tendencies, and who are prepared to be responsible for their educational experience. An applied study is a challenge, but journalism is a field worth challenging yourself with. The freedom provided by a student publication, such as The Meliorist, yields an outlet for creativity, expression, and learning that is only limited by yourself.

By Francis Weller

Combat sports are some of the oldest athletic activities in human history. Ancient Greeks were passionate about developing their skills in early forms of wrestling, the Roman empire celebrated combat of different forms in the colosseum, and China was the birthplace of a large number of Asian martial arts that later inspired other styles such as karate and taekwondo. Martial arts have been an important part of humanity’s sporting history, with it now gaining popularity thanks to the Ultimate Fighting Championship. To put it simply, people have been interested in creating a combat sport that helps develop and display one’s skills in fighting and the strategies behind it.

The past couple of years has seen the growth of a new combative scene. Since the explosion in MMA’s popularity, new organizations are trying to develop new ways to bring new combat sports into people’s minds. Spend enough time on the internet and you will find what some are trying to push as the newest supposed combat sport: slap-fighting. The rules are simple; two people stand facing each other with a table in between them, and they take turns slapping each other across the face until one can no longer continue or the fight goes to a judge’s decision. As crazy as it sounds, this new form of competition has seen occasional bursts of internet fame. While at first glance, many thought of this as a dumb activity from mostly Russian and Polish media circles, slap fighting is now receiving unprecedented media attention. This year, UFC president Dana White presented the beginning of the world’s premier major slap-fighting promotion, Power Slap (Brooks, 2023). Now being shown on TV and with even a live event in the books, this has prompted combat sports athletes, enthusiasts, and media to ponder: is this a new combat sport?

To understand where slap-fighting is now, it’s important to look at some of its beginnings. Slap-fighting has popped up on occasion in internet video platforms and viral meme boards for the last ten years. For the most part, most videos of slap-fighting competitions were rarely more than a couple of drunk people shooting amateur-quality videos of smacking each other as a game. It seems that somewhere around the mid-2010s, slap-fighting started to modernize. As slapping competitions grew, they stayed mostly as small, organized events, usually in Russia.

However, as platforms like Instagram, Twitter, and YouTube kept growing in popularity, many slap-fighting groups and small organizations began to post videos and do some advertising online. This sparked small clips that would sometimes go immensely viral (Cocksedge, 2019). For a couple of years, slap fighting stayed as just that, small, organized events with limited crowds in small areas of Eastern Europe. It eventually grew to the point that western promoters began to take notice of slap-fighting and decided to bring it over to Western Europe and North America. From here, we saw the beginning of organizations like the Slap-Fighting Championship and even a one-time event hosted by Logan Paul and Arnold Schwarzenegger. As small clips kept going into viral popularity, it was only a matter of time before a large organization took notice of the activity and decided to make it into one of the newest combat sports. This is where Dana White, president of the UFC, entered, announcing the beginning of Power Slap, the biggest professional slap-fighting league in North America. It’s important to note that slap-fighting and organizations like Power Slap have received immense criticism, especially since its beginning as a professional pseudo-sport.

Training for slap-fighting usually involves dynamic weight training. Medicine balls and weight training moving the muscles along the same path as a slap are commonplace. Of course, hard sparring is not a common form of training, but in some cases, two participants will partner and simulate the slap fight, using pool noodles instead of striking each other with their hands, as you would in a competi-tive setting. Competitors in slap fighting will also focus a lot of their training on developing the muscles in the neck to absorb the shock of the slap they receive. As far as defensive training goes, slap fighters will practice clenching the muscles in their neck and jaws in different positions and at different times to lessen the effect of any strike. As simple as it originally seems, the athletes claim there is a certain com-plexity to attaining and using good quality slapping technique. For their slap to be as effective as possible, fighters must carefully keep their feet planted, turn their shoulders and hips, and calculate the angle of their slap to hurt their opponent and avoid accidentally com-mitting a foul. It’s honestly crazy to think about how much thought some of these competitors put into the quality of their slap.

By far, the biggest criticism against slap-fighting relates to traumatic brain injury. Media and professionals in the world of sports science have condemned slap-fighting due to its risk to fighter safety and the likelihood of traumatic brain injuries.

Written by Andres Salazar

Whereas sports like boxing, MMA, kickboxing, and so on allow the other fighters to protect themselves by trying to block strikes or evade them entirely, slap-fighting rules dictate that should a fighter flinch or attempt to block the strike with a shoulder, a penalty would be given. In this sense, slap-fighting almost incentivizes the lack of protection against an oncoming strike.

Critics of slap-fighting, including neuroscientists, have voiced their concerns over the possibility of developing permanent and severe issues in the brain, such as CTE (Dawson, 2023). Chronic traumat-ic encephalopathy (CTE) is an unfortunate consequence of many combat sports and more traditional sports with high levels of forceful contact, such as football. CTE is an irreversible consequence of long-term repeated trauma to the head, leading to the gradual deterioration of the brain, which causes memory loss, lack of motor skills, and trouble speaking, among other symptoms (McKee et al., 2009). While most contact sports attempt to mitigate traumatic brain injuries through the use of helmets and gloves to lessen the effects of the blows to the head, the only way to participate in slap fighting is by directly doing the thing that many sports organizations are trying to avoid, strong, unprotected, and repeated blows to the head. Even when compared to MMA and boxing, slap-fighting seems more dangerous, as other combat sports also focus on strikes to the body and submission grappling, unlike slap-fighting’s rules which only allow strikes to the head.

Unfortunately for Power Slap president Dana White, there hasn’t been a big wave of support. Writers for news publications such as The New York Times have condemned slap-fighting and White himself for his role in the growth of the sport’s popularity. Even inside the combat sports media sphere, the opinion of disapproval is almost entirely unanimous. Well-known combat sports media voices on websites and news outlets like MMAFighting and MMAJunkie have called Power Slap stupid and ridiculous. Journalists and critics continue to condemn Dana White’s new organization, in large part due to Power Slap’s debut coming shortly after White was caught on camera slapping his wife during a New Year’s Eve party (Brookhouse, 2023). With that all being said, Dana White has continued to push forward with the sport’s growth, stating that the ratings and viewership numbers have been consistently impressive across all their media platforms (Nambiar, 2023).

Even after Power Slap crowned its first set of world champions, public opinions on the sport have remained mostly negative. A look at the comments on almost all of Power Slap’s media platforms will reveal people making fun of the competitors, the organization, and the activity itself. Across platforms, people are even refusing to call it a sport. Power Slap is going through official means to conduct its events by employing licensed and reputable combat sports referees and being sanctioned by government-ruled athletic commissions (Martin, 2022). However, it seems that people still struggle to recognize it as a sport. For most of the public and media, slap-fighting is nothing but an event where two people slap each other for the entertainment of others. While that technically fits the definition of a sport as a competition between two parties involving physical movement to achieve a goal, it’s hard to find anyone to call it a sport with pride.

Power Slap’s first major live event March 11th, 2023, saw multiple competitors become the first world champions in their weight categories. The future of slap-fighting seems unclear. On the one hand, it seems that everyone aside from the odd media outlet thinks slap-fighting is nothing but a ridiculous pseudo-sport that will fizzle out soon enough. On the other hand, organizations like Power Slap and Slap Fight Championship claim that their ratings and viewership are as high as ever and will continue to grow, with Power Slap already preparing for a second live event in Abu Dhabi (Harkness, 2023). Slap-fighting is trying very hard to cement itself in the world of athletic competition. While the entire combat sports media sphere is trying its hardest to ignore it and hoping that it dies out soon, slap-fighting may be here to stay as the newest, strangest, and most controversial combat sport.

Resources

Brookhouse, B. (2023). “Dana White slaps wife during physical altercation on New Year’s Eve: ‘There is no excuse’.” CBSNews. Retrieved March 20, 2023, from https://www.cbssports.com/mma/news/dana-white-slaps-wife-during-physicalaltercation-on-new-years-eve-there-is-no-excuse/.

Brooks, K. (2023). “Face-slapping league turns heads as it looks to become next major U.S. sport.” CBSNews. Retrieved March 10, 2023, from https:// www.cbsnews.com/news/slap-fighting-power-slap-league-dana-white-sport/.

Dawson, A. (2023). “American neuroscientist and concussion expert slammed slap fight-ing, just as the brutal sport makes inroads in the US.” Business Insider. Retrieved March 10, 2023, from https://www.businessinsider.in/sports/news/ american-neuroscientist-and-concussion-expert-slammed-slap-fighting-just-as-thebrutal-sport-makes-inroads-in-the-us/amp_articleshow/97101456.cms.

Harkness, R. (2023). “Dana White doubles down on ‘incredibly successful’ Power Slap, reveals plan to ship season 2 to Abu Dhabi.” SBNation. Retrieved March 11, 2023, from https://www.mmamania.com/2023/3/10/23633730/dana-whitedoubles-down-incred-ibly-successful-power-slap-reveals-plan-to-ship-season-2-toabu-dhabi.

Martin, D. (2022). “Dana White’s Power Slap League gets approval from Nevada Com-mission, first event planned for late 2022.” MMAFighting. Retrieved March 10, 2023, from https://www.mmafighting.com/2022/10/18/23411138/dana-whitepower-slap-league-gets-approval-from-nevada-commission-first-event-planned-forlate-2022.

McKee, A. C., Cantu, R. C., Nowinski, C. J., Hedley-Whyte, E. T., Gavett, B. E., Budson, A. E., Santini, V. E., Lee, H. S., Kubilus, C. A., & Stern, R. A. (2009). “Chronic traumatic encephalopathy in athletes: progressive tauopathy after repetitive head injury.” Journal of neuropathology and experimental neurology, 68(7), 709–735. Retrieved March 10, 2023, from https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/ PMC2945234/.

Nambiar, A. (2023). “Dana White claims Power Slap League viewership is at par with NBA, reveals social media numbers.” Sportskeeda. Retrieved March 11, 2023, from https://www.sportskeeda.com/mma/news-dana-white-claims-power-slap-leagueview-ership-par-nba-reveals-social-media-numbers.