Editorial: Dana White, with or without you, Power Slap sucks

Where Dana White attempts to blame ‘the media’ for the struggles of Power Slap.

Illustration by Chris Rini

In recent interviews UFC president Dana White has appeared to be under the illusion that Power Slap is struggling to catch on with sports fans because his name is attached to the carnival-grade pseudo-sports venture.

“Everything that’s negative that’s being said about it (Power Slap) it is an attack on me,” White recently said on the Bussin’ with the Boys podcast. “It’s me that these guys are attacking—it’s not the actual slapping. The media, it’s all about me. Okay? They want to fuck me. That’s why they’re saying what they’re saying about Slap.”

“This shit was going on—this has been on the internet since—2017 is when I first saw it,” White added. “There’s 350,000,000 views but I’m the only fucking guy who has seen it? There’s no stories written, there’s no ‘Oh my God, this is horrible, how’s this on social media? Children are watching this.’ This has been going on since fucking—well, I noticed it in 2017. It could have been before that for all I know. But now it’s horrible and it’s a tragedy and it needs to go away.” 

To be fair to White, he’s certainly got plenty of reason to think that he might just be the problem—considering he was caught on video slapping his wife at a bar in Cabo just before the season one debut and that he has no small amount of self publicized hatred for any media members he feels are unfavorable to his interests. In this case however, I don’t think there’s one scintilla of truth to it.