Dana White’s Power Slap Dropped by TBS After Only One Season

Power Slap
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Dylan Gwinn

Dana White’s Power Slap League has been knocked out of TBS’s broadcast line-up after only one season.

The highly controversial league, featured contestants standing in front of each other and presenting their faces as targets to be knocked out by haymaker slaps from other opponents. It did not gain ratings that justified the controversy surrounding the show, and the network decided to pull the plug.

According to MMA Fighting, viewership for the final episode drew 220,000 average viewers with a .05 rating in the all-important 18-49-year-old demographic.

TBS agreed to feature the event due to the impressive amount of views it received on YouTube and social media. Though, those numbers didn’t consistently come through on television, and the likelihood that many who viewed slap fighting online and were appalled by it is high.

Speaking on the Pat McAfee Show, White announced that he had found a new home for Power Slap on the online streaming platform, Rumble.

“I’ve come to a two-year deal for [Power Slap]. We haven’t done the deal yet but we have a term sheet. I have a term sheet with Rumble for the next two years to deliver two more episodes of the reality show, Power Slap, and eight live fights, and I’m working on a deal right now to film season 2 on Fight Island in Abu Dhabi,” White told McAfee.

Ominous signs for the league abounded as concerns for the safety of the participants became rampant. Even some of those who made slap fighting legal regret their decision to do so.

Stephen Cloobeck, the former head of the Nevada Athletic Commission who voted to legalize slap fighting in Nevada, regrets that decision.

“I made a mistake,” Cloobeck told the Associated Press. “I’m not happy about it.”

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