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South African Slap Fighter Wants Rule Book for Little-Known Sport

South African celebrity slap fighter, Danie "Pitbull" van Heerden, poses for a portrait at a slap fighting competition in Johannesburg, South Africa July 28, 2024. (Reuters)
South African celebrity slap fighter, Danie "Pitbull" van Heerden, poses for a portrait at a slap fighting competition in Johannesburg, South Africa July 28, 2024. (Reuters)
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South African Slap Fighter Wants Rule Book for Little-Known Sport

South African celebrity slap fighter, Danie "Pitbull" van Heerden, poses for a portrait at a slap fighting competition in Johannesburg, South Africa July 28, 2024. (Reuters)
South African celebrity slap fighter, Danie "Pitbull" van Heerden, poses for a portrait at a slap fighting competition in Johannesburg, South Africa July 28, 2024. (Reuters)

He started out as a boxer, then switched to the wrestling ring. Now, South Africa's Danie "Pitbull" van Heerden wants recognition and rules for his new sport - slap fighting.

In the little-known combat sport, competitors stand face-to-face and take turns to slap each other in the face. A penalty is awarded whenever the person being slapped flinches.

After a video of van Heerden slap fighting gained more than 17 million views on TikTok two years ago, he was invited to compete at a slap fighting event in Las Vegas where he won by technical knockout.

Now, the 37-year-old is calling for South African authorities to recognize and regulate slap fighting, saying formal rules are needed to keep players safe, ensure fair play and protect competitors from potential injury lawsuits.

As word of the sport spreads online, he said it could appeal to people who had never previously participated in combat sports.

"Power slap is the only sport which you can basically come from a couch, and you don't have to be that fit," he said.

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Varieties

Fossils Suggest Even Smaller ‘Hobbits’ Roamed an Indonesian Island 700,000 Years Ago

A fragment (left) of the upper arm bone called the humerus - belonging to a diminutive extinct human species called Homo floresiensis, that dates to about 700,000 years ago and was discovered at the Mata Menge site on the Indonesian island of Flores - is shown at the same scale as the humerus of a later Homo floresiensis fossil dating to 60,000 years ago from the Liang Bua cave site in Flores, in this handout image released on August 6, 2024. (Yousuke Kaifu/Handout via Reuters)
A fragment (left) of the upper arm bone called the humerus - belonging to a diminutive extinct human species called Homo floresiensis, that dates to about 700,000 years ago and was discovered at the Mata Menge site on the Indonesian island of Flores - is shown at the same scale as the humerus of a later Homo floresiensis fossil dating to 60,000 years ago from the Liang Bua cave site in Flores, in this handout image released on August 6, 2024. (Yousuke Kaifu/Handout via Reuters)
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Fossils Suggest Even Smaller ‘Hobbits’ Roamed an Indonesian Island 700,000 Years Ago

A fragment (left) of the upper arm bone called the humerus - belonging to a diminutive extinct human species called Homo floresiensis, that dates to about 700,000 years ago and was discovered at the Mata Menge site on the Indonesian island of Flores - is shown at the same scale as the humerus of a later Homo floresiensis fossil dating to 60,000 years ago from the Liang Bua cave site in Flores, in this handout image released on August 6, 2024. (Yousuke Kaifu/Handout via Reuters)
A fragment (left) of the upper arm bone called the humerus - belonging to a diminutive extinct human species called Homo floresiensis, that dates to about 700,000 years ago and was discovered at the Mata Menge site on the Indonesian island of Flores - is shown at the same scale as the humerus of a later Homo floresiensis fossil dating to 60,000 years ago from the Liang Bua cave site in Flores, in this handout image released on August 6, 2024. (Yousuke Kaifu/Handout via Reuters)

Twenty years ago on an Indonesian island, scientists discovered fossils of an early human species that stood at about 3 1/2 feet (1.07 meters) tall — earning them the nickname “hobbits.”

Now a new study suggests ancestors of the hobbits were even slightly shorter.

“We did not expect that we would find smaller individuals from such an old site,” study co-author Yousuke Kaifu of the University of Tokyo said in an email.

The original hobbit fossils — named by the discoverers after characters in “The Lord of the Rings” — date back to between 60,000 and 100,000 years ago. The new fossils were excavated at a site called Mata Menge, about 45 miles from the cave where the first hobbit remains were uncovered.

In 2016, researchers suspected the earlier relatives could be shorter than the hobbits after studying a jawbone and teeth collected from the new site. Further analysis of a tiny arm bone fragment and teeth suggests the ancestors were a mere 2.4 inches (6 centimeters) shorter and existed 700,000 years ago.

“They’ve convincingly shown that these were very small individuals,” said Dean Falk, an evolutionary anthropologist at Florida State University who was not involved with the research.

The findings were published Tuesday in the journal Nature Communications.

Researchers have debated how the hobbits – named Homo floresiensis after the remote Indonesian island of Flores – evolved to be so small and where they fall in the human evolutionary story. They're thought to be among the last early human species to go extinct.

Scientists don't yet know whether the hobbits shrank from an earlier, taller human species called Homo erectus that lived in the area, or from an even more primitive human predecessor. More research – and fossils – are needed to pin down the hobbits’ place in human evolution, said Matt Tocheri, an anthropologist at Canada's Lakehead University.

“This question remains unanswered and will continue to be a focus of research for some time to come,” Tocheri, who was not involved with the research, said in an email.