In 2024, athletic commissions may face a devil's bargain with Power Slap & UFC

It's beginning to feel like the testosterone hall pass era all over again.

Art by Chris Rini

Remember the years of rumors about Zuffa Boxing? Dana White was finally going to promote the big fights you somehow weren't getting as a fan. Only he could solve the Rubik's cube.

Things changed quickly when Ari Emanuel and Endeavor took over ownership of UFC. If there's one thing Ari Emanuel isn't interested in, it's being on the wrong side of the profit margin in a business. He follows the flow like the sharks in options trading. If there's money to be made, he wants to be on the right side of the trade.

So, that was seemingly curtains for Zuffa Boxing, Dana White turned his focus to slap fighting. That's a business model with profit margins more appealing to Endeavor. [Don’t miss Dana’s latest interview with Forbes where he outlines what I have referred to as the “suffocation” strategy.]

But would someone as powerful and feared as Ari Emanuel personally engage himself in horse trading of favors to help promote a spectacle that could damage the underlying credibility of the core UFC image throughout the world?

Yes. He already has.

If you think of Power Slap as Dana White's personal 401k, it helps rationalize why he is spending so much time and energy on a project that has so many naysayers. And unlike your pet project, Dana has one of the most powerful business moguls in the world in his corner.

Last week's integration of Power Slap fighting at the UFC 290 weigh-in was a test run of things to come.