Taylor Swift is one of the most recognizable women in the world. The popular singer gets an extraordinary amount of airtime during NFL broadcasts on Kansas City Chiefs' games since she began dating Chiefs' star Travis Kelce earlier this year.
Swift has 279 million followers on Instagram. She also 94.9 million on X, 55 million on YouTube and the hashtag of her name, #taylorswift, on TikTok has had 170.6 BILLION views.
Yet, the most views of any reel Swift posted to Instagram in 2023 has 91.1 million views, or about two-thirds the number that a Power Slap post of Franciska "Sheena Bathory" Szabo eating a slap from Christine Wolmarans has gotten. A judo black belt from Hungary who now lives in Miami, Florida, Bathory knocked out Christine Wolmarans in the second round. A video of her taking Wolmarans' slap at Power Slap 5 on Oct. 25 and then blowing her a kiss has over 154 million views on the Power Slap Instagram page.
Swift's largest YouTube short has received 125 million views. The largest PowerSlap YouTube short has 435 million.
A video on TikTok taken by reporter Amy Kaplan of Bathory's KO of Wolmarans has more than four million views. It also has more than 91,000 likes and 3,600 comments.
It's just a sign of the rapid growth of the company that Dana White, the UFC CEO, and his partners created in 2023. According to Power Slap president Frank Lamicella, there are five shorts on the Power Slap YouTube channel that are bigger than any YouTube short the UFC has done. Lamicella said there were 12 Power Slap videos that exceeded 50 million views on social media, and 24 videos on Instagram that exceeded 10 million. In five days between Christmas and New Year's, subscribers to the Power Slap YouTube channel went from 725,000 to 900,000. That's roughly 1,500 subscribers an hour every hour for five consecutive days during the holiday.
Those kinds of numbers are staggering, and quickly gained White's attention. White told keviniole.com on Monday -- while he was on vacation -- that Power Slap is already profitable.
"Only five events in, we’ve exceeded many other combat sports promotions on major key metrics," White said. "When this business scales up, we expect even more fan interest & star power for the athletes. And it's profitable! Other (combat sports) leagues are raising money & merging just to stay alive. We are revenue heavy, profitable, and a small, tight group of owners with no outside investors. (We have) high margins with positive EBITDA with high cash conversion."
White texted keviniole.com numerous times on New Year's Eve and New Year's Day as videos posted on Power Slap on YouTube continue to increase. He marveled as the numbers continued to rise.
Lamicella said one of the reasons for the growth is that UFC hasn't had an event since Dec. 16, and Power Slap is in the middle of a season that is streaming Wednesdays at 9 p.m. ET on Rumble.
"Power Slap clips tend to have a more viral component," Lamicella told keviniole.com. "It's like a jackpot viral component, where you get these 50-plus million videos way more often than other sports including, quite frankly, UFC. We put one up of Eviahn Scott eating a slap (from Makini Manu) that's at 62 million. ... So when a video is popular and hits big, the YouTube algorithm then perpetuates how many views it gets and [others] increase exponentially."
Bathory found that out. She came to the U.S. in 2019, looking to make a new life for herself. Her goal was to do professional wrestling and bodybuilding after putting together a successful career as a judoka in Europe.
Power Slap has helped change her life, particularly after an abusive relationship. She has been training in mixed martial arts at MMA Masters in Miami, and plans to fight in MMA, but she's fallen in love with slap and said it's helped heal her.
"Since I came to Power Slap, I've found there is a lot in me," Bathory told keviniole.com. "It's triggered something in me. I felt like the biggest fighting challenges were coming toward me, and it inspired me to get back into martial arts. I'm training so, so hard in MMA, which is very good for Power Slap, as well. I'm training as hard as (if I were on the) Olympic level in judo fights."
She found her way, she said, and used the feelings she had about being hit in a personal relationship to her advantage in Power Slap competitions.
She knocked her good friend, Kortney Olson, out in an exhibition match in 2022 that left Olson somersaulting forward. She then became the first female to win an official Power Slap bout when she knocked out Wolmarans.
When she's slapped, she said she thinks back to when she was abused, and it makes her feel disrespected.
"Being slapped [in a competition] is a big trigger for me since I experienced this (in real life)," Bathory said. "Power Slap gave me a purpose, and I think that's the best way to explain what it's done for me. Coming to a new country, the United States, I had a little bit of feeling lost, you know? I was going in many directions in my journey, but Power Slap gave me a purpose. Since I discovered my purpose, I found the right direction I want to go and I've found so many answers in my life. I can now understand so many experiences from my past and why it was happening to me.
"I can invest in myself now. The abusive relationship and all the other stuff, it's paying off now. I can use it as a tool, because it's a big trigger for me. ... I have the opportunity to show the world the power I'm carrying inside me."
She said she wants to unlock the highest potential of herself and hopes to score a huge total of knockouts so that she's always remembered by Power Slap fans.
If she does, she's going to continue to rack up the social media views, which hopefully will lead to her making big money.
But Lamicella said the good thing is that the statistics indicate the sport is safe. Of 115 matches regulated by the Nevada Athletic Commission, only six percent of the athletes were taken to the hospital. Only five percent received a greater than 60-day medical suspension, many of which were due to hand or wrist injuries. None of the CT head scans revealed any acute head injuries and, notably, no subdural hematomas.
California recently approved slap fighting and there will be an event there soon. Lamicella is hoping to bring an event to Texas before long, talk that sounds like the UFC in 2003 and 2004 when White was bringing the live show all over the country to try to gain traction.
Slap already has that traction thanks to its penchant for viral videos. And White has never been shy to say 'I told you so,' but he called its success in 2022 when plans were being formed and there were plenty more skeptics than believers.
"This thing is a monster," White said. "Just watch what this does."