POWER SLAP
What is Power Slap, TBS and Dana White’s new TV show?
We now know how well Dana White’s Power Slap did in its premiere on TBS on Wednesday night.
Power Slap is Dana White’s new show, where “Contestants’ or “Athletes,” as the UFC CEO refers to the participants, hit each other across the face on an open palm slap with no defense to it, debuted on TBS. YouTube videos popularised this new “Sport,” and it seems it will be here to stay.
According to Nielsen, Power Slap’s one-hour program, which began at 10 p.m., averaged 295,000 viewers. Power Slap’s overall market share was.10% among adults 18–49.
Wednesday’s broadcast, which aired between America Reports on Fox News and See No Evil on Investigation Discovery, helped the program reach position 45 in the overall cable ratings that day.
Power Slap, TBS, and Dana White criticized by doctors
After the launch of “Power Slap: Road to the Title,” a reality series about the UFC-backed slap combat league, on Wednesday, former WWE wrestler and neurologist Chris Nowinski criticized UFC president Dana White and TBS.
Nowinski, a concussion specialist, tweeted a disturbing video Thursday. It showed fighter Chris Kennedy’s acute brain damage. According to Healthline, “when a person has a hit that’s significant enough to produce traumatic brain damage (TBI), such as a concussion, their arms typically fall into an abnormal position,” which Nowinski called “the fencing posture.”
Nowinski also addressed White and TBS.
“This is so sad. Note the fencing posture with the first brain injury. He may never be the same,” Nowinski tweeted. “Dana White & TBS should be ashamed. Pure exploitation. What’s next, ‘Who can survive a stabbing’?
Despite te backlash and Dana White’s controversy Powe Slap did well
With All Elite Wrestling’s weekly program AEW Dynamite consistently ranking as one of cable’s highest-rated shows, Power Slap had an excellent springboard into its premiere. On average, 969,000 people watched AEW’s two-hour show from 8 to 10 p.m.
According to those numbers, Power Slap was only able to keep around a third of the viewers who had originally turned in for AEW Dynamite.
The premiere of Power Slap on TBS had been scheduled for January 11, but was postponed by a week when a video surfaced of White smacking his wife after a fight on New Year’s Eve in Mexico. TBS initially delayed the premiere of Power Slap until January 18 but later moved the premiere date ahead.