I am not here to moralize, which is to say I don’t want to be that “get off my lawn” guy who bellyaches that the golden age of sports ended in the 1970s.
As my millennial and Gen Z daughters like to point out, “Dad, sports did not end with Secretariat … blah, blah, blah and Doctor J … blah, blah, blah and Kyle Rote Jr. winning ABC’s The Superstars … blah, blah, blah.”
At the same time, my girls concede that just because a guy is old does not automatically make him crazy.
For instance, am I crazy to think two guys slapping each other silly should not constitute a sport? Yet here we are. On Saturday at the Arnold Classic, large men with meaty hands will stand a few feet apart as they alternate taking open-handed swings at one another. The first one to blink, or in some cases pass out or even die from the impact — keep reading — will be declared the loser.
As the great humor columnist Dave Barry likes to say, “I am not making this up.”
Most slap fighting competitions are held in Europe, where beefy Russian Vasily Kamosky has become a social media star. Kamosky, nicknamed “Dumpling,” is featured in a knockout compilation video that has been viewed 50 million times in the past five months, according to YouTube.
How did we get here? Let’s ask Ah-nald himself.
Slap fighting:‘How is that a real event?’ Logan Paul, Arnold Schwarzenegger co-promote slap fighting event
“Why this is the perfect event is because the Arnold Classic is a sports and fitness festival,” Schwarzenegger explained. “We never kind of choose (or) have an attitude about, no matter what the sport is.”
Mr. Terminator said this Tuesday while appearing on Logan Paul’s “Impaulsive” podcast. (Who is Logan Paul? Keep reading.)
“People ask, ‘That competition — why would you have that?’ ” the former California governor continued. “I got the same question when we had an ax-throwing competition. And when we had the Scottish Games competition, where they carry around this heavy beam and throw it.”
Hard stop.
The one thing you can say for sure is the Arnold Classic does not discriminate on the basis of being bizarre. I know this from experience. Every February, my boss would ask which event I wanted to write about for the Arnold. Some of the options were fairly mainstream, including handball, jump rope and pickleball (before it got big). Others, not so much. Vise grip? Arm wrestling?
But no one died jumping rope.
In 2021, Artur Walczak died during something called the PunchDown gala in Poland. Walczak was 46 years old when he got knocked out by a slap, hitting his head when he fell. The Polish autopsy report was a bit confusing — did the victim die from the slap or from cracking his skull on the ground? — but it was crystal clear of one thing right: he died.
Walczak’s death is included in some of the promotional material associated with the combat sport, but it’s not certain whether the tragedy is supposed to be a marketing win or a warning.
Logan Paul would probably say both. Paul, 26, grew up in Westlake, Ohio, before moving to California, where he further cemented his social media status as a dude willing to do just about anything to gain followers. One such stunt involved making a video that showed him practicing for a slap fight against Dumpling, but Paul backed out after knocking out a guy brought in for him to practice against. It seems his conscience could not condone the carnage, or else he watched video of Dumpling and thought, “I’m not that crazy.”
Of course, that did not stop Paul from teaming with the 74-year-old Schwarzenegger to bring the Slap Fighting Championship to the Arnold Classic, where America’s top slapper goes by the name “Da Crazy Hawaiian.”
“I love the absurdity of it,” Paul told USA Today. “I love the idea that two guys could just stand across from each other and just slap each other and see who falls down first. It’s hilarious to me. It’s like, how is that a real event?”
Great question.
“We have everything,” Schwarzenegger said. “We don’t judge anything. We are there only to have people compete. And for people to watch and be entertained and be inspired.”
Inspired?
“I want to reach to the little village in Poland, the little village in Ukraine, in Russia, in China, in Africa, in the Middle East, where the poorest of the poorest people are,” Schwarzenegger continued. “If they can watch this and they can see (their people) make it, I want to inspire those people that they can do it. Chase your vision.”
Apparently, getting slapped silly is part of that vision-casting. Hey, no one is forcing these men to not be allowed to turn the other cheek. But a sport? Seems like a stretch.
roller@dispatch.com
