Boxing Play-by-Play: Slapgate

In one sense, Will Smith has spent a career preparing to slap Chris Rock across the face. In an industry that fetishizes masochism—Christian Bale’s subsisting on little more than two hundred calories’ worth of black coffee and apples for “The Machinist”; Robert De Niro’s arduous pasta regimen, which put sixty pounds on him for “Raging Bull”—Smith’s prep work stands out for its theatrical toughness. It could be said that he trains as if he were in a “Rocky” montage.

To recover from playing a middle-aged dad in “King Richard,” Smith undertook workouts that included climbing the hundred and sixty flights of stairs up the Burj Khalifa; after that, he scaled the spire. For “Ali,” he trained with Sugar Ray Leonard’s former coach Darrell Foster. Foster told the press at the time that Smith spent a year taking punches from a former heavyweight champion and sparring with his hands tied behind his back; he broke his thumb, bruised his face. A certain realism was adhered to. “Will vowed to have no sex for the year,” Foster added. “Sex saps a fighter’s energy.” Once, he ran Smith through exercises in the Rocky Mountains. The oxygen deprivation was supposed to simulate the late rounds of a championship bout. “He fell to his knees, and I made him write Ali’s name in the snow,” Foster recalled last summer. “He said, ‘Now I get it.’ ”

After Smith hit Chris Rock onstage at the Oscars, individual reactions spanned a spectrum of shock and blame. Some of the discourse focussed on the semiotics of a slap versus a punch. Also on how much weight you give the action-hero training. Can a Hollywood boxer actually fight like a real-life one? The pro-Smith, nothing-to-see-here crowd (“If only folks were as agitated by members of Congress taking a swing at democracy and then [calmly] returning to their seats,” one Twitter user posted) relied on a confidence that a Will Smith slap is physically harmless, if psychically devastating. On the other end were those who viewed Smith as something like a super-villain. “Just a reminder that if Will Smith had slapped Betty White for a joke she made (however insensitive), she easily could’ve fallen backward, cracked her skull and died of a brain bleed,” one doctor tweeted. “Same with Bob Saget obviously.”

To the scorecards we go! A few expert judges kept score at home. The first matter of business was determining the slap’s legitimacy. Could it have been staged? Charles Farrell, who managed the former undisputed heavyweight champion of the world Leon Spinks after he lost his title, and who sometimes rigged professional fights for the Mafia, said no. “Chris Rock doesn’t seem to anticipate the slap,” he said. “He has his face slightly forward. For somebody who’s not a pro, it would be hard to take a shot like that full force, knowing that it was coming. You would flinch.”

Freddie Roach, the renowned trainer of Mike Tyson and Manny Pacquiao, was consulted on technique. An asynchronous panel was convened.

ROACH: He got a good shot in. But the mechanics were terrible. He definitely telegraphed that punch.

FARRELL: He was too squared up when he let the punch go.

ROACH: Two weeks in the gym, we’ll get him fixed. Definitely he would start off on the mirror, work on delivering the punch correctly. Then we’d go right to the mitts. I’d hold the mitts for him, and we’d make that shot a very meaningful shot.

FARRELL: What’s interesting about it is that not even by professional standards, but by any serious standards, Will Smith has absolutely no power. They say, in boxing, punchers are born, they’re not made. I think that probably applies here.

ROACH: If I were Chris Rock, I would’ve come back with the right hand.

FARRELL: Smith overcommits with it. He turns his shoulder so that his arm is totally turned around. His face is completely exposed with no ability to block a punch.

As for Rock, there was not much for the judges to go on besides an ability to take a blow—thick skin, of the literal sort. “I like the chin,” Roach said. “The chin is very good. Very, very good.”

Talk turned to a possible rematch. Both men agreed that the outcome hinged on unknown factors. Heart, canniness, un-sapped energy. Also: strategy. Farrell said, “My suggestion to Rock would be to keep his chin tucked in, move his head back, let the punch miss, let Smith move out of position, and just come back with a countershot.”

“Rock has to get into a short-distance fight,” Roach said. “His opponent is taller and rangier. He’d have to stay close to his chest. Will Smith has to keep him on the end of his jab. It’s just like Margarito vs. Pacquiao.”

Oscar De La Hoya, one of the best pound-for-pound boxers of all time, rendered a decision. “If it was a twelve-round fight, I would pick Will Smith to win in the fifth,” he said. As for the slap, “That wasn’t the right thing to do.” But he thought Smith was holding back. “We saw him portraying Ali. We know he can throw a punch with knockout power.” He said that he was exploring making a bio-pic about himself: “I’m looking forward to, hopefully, Oscar winning an Oscar.” De La Hoya figured he could say whatever he wanted onstage about Smith, and Smith wouldn’t try anything. ♦