Damon Feldman Wants Will Smith vs. Chris Rock Fight In New Smack Fighting League | TMZ Sports

Welcome inside the TMZ newsroom. I'm so excited. My buddy, Damon Feldman, is here. It's been a long time, Damon, man. Absolutely. Very great. We've been talking forever. Yes. The reality is celebrity boxing has blown up. Not your promotion, Celebrity Boxing, but just celebrity boxing as a whole. Big stars getting in the boxing ring, Damon, has blown up. And you really were the guy. I mean, you're going to the early 2000s, right? You were the one. I mean, Amy Fisher, Octomom. All that stuff. Vanilla Ice. You were at the forefront and then, obviously, carried on through the years, Damon, and got bigger and bigger. And Aaron Carter and Lamar Odom. And you have put on a lot of big fights. You covered them all. We covered them all. We covered a bunch of them. What do you think when you see the way now, like Jake Paul and kind of how big this has all become? Oh, unbelievable. I mean, Jake Paul did a phenomenal job. He's smart. He did it all about himself. And he became pro. And he trained. He did it. But a lot of these other guys are putting them on. There's a strategy of putting this in. You have to make sure you put these events on the right way or it doesn't work out. You know, I do it where I go after names that are either older or still have a big name like Lamar Odom, different guys like that, to have some credibility to bring some fans, sponsors, and media behind it. Yeah. How hard is it to get, I mean, you go in a boxing ring, you have the potential to be embarrassed. It's not easy. It's hard. It takes a lot of work. How hard is it to actually get these celebrities to fight? It's got to be a little tough sometimes. I mean, you know, look, man, Shaq, you saw me and Shaq talk. He was going to fight some guy, one of the bouncers. I can't even think of his name right now, but great guy. Right. But, you know, everybody, I pitched everybody from, you know, me and you. You know, you say, well, what do you think of this guy? I'm going after these people. Like every time you call me up and say something, I'm like, I got to get out and make that happen. The guy will say yes, how much, or then two weeks later, you never hear from the guy again. So, you know, that's the way it is. Right. They start to think about it, maybe, and it's a big commitment. It's a big commitment. Are you surprised that it has all become this big? I mean, could you have imagined, in 2002, 2003, could Damon Feldman have imagined that this would all be like this? No, man. I really, honestly, nobody believed in it. Like, I would run around the different pizza places, businesses, like, who do you want to sponsor? 500 bucks, you know? Yeah, yeah. Then it just blew up, you know what I mean? It's just, you know, you never knew it was going to do that, but the social media took it over, you know, internet, and just coming out with something different. Boxing is very saturated. That's why I'm, you know, here to talk to you about my new venture, you know? Right, right. So, let's, right there, you've got the belt, as people can see. Looks awesome. Smack fighting championship. Obviously, we have, we know about boxing, we know about MMA, we know about, you know, obviously, Dana White's doing. This is different, though. Explain. No, 100%. Smack fighting championships is where, you know, two guys are going to go in, go in the ring, battle it out. Not at a table, they're going to actually battle it out. Like, it's sort of like a boxing match, but you're not punching, you're smacking. And what you're going to hear is that all the time. Is that good noise? The noise is going to go, and you get smacked, you could get knocked down, knocked out. It's just, it's just, you know, I have a good strategy here with this, and I put it together, and it was, like, three in the morning, one night, and, you know, this girl, Labre, was helping me out, and we just, like, she was my girlfriend, and we just talked about it. It was, like, wow, man. It was, like, this could turn it, and we just ended up doing all these handfuls. There's Jack Doherty, all these Crip Macs. Everybody's coming on board now, like, because they see the new, it's sort of going to be, like, the, honestly, Mike, it's going to be the new celebrity boxing, but it's smack fighting championships. And the word smack is, like, I'm also coming up with a TV court show called Smack Court, so instead of slapping it in the courtroom, they're going to smack it out in a ring, you know? Okay, so this is not, like, slap fighting or power slap would be, you know, fighter X smacks, fighter Y returns, obviously, and we keep going. This is, this is essentially a real deal fight, but instead of throwing a punch, you're smacking them. Oh, yeah, you're going to smack. It's basically, you're going to try and outsmack each other to the body, head, and just do it. Three one-minute rounds, and five one-minute rounds to the championship match, you become a champion. Okay, so you fight multiple times in one night. Well, we're going to work on to that, but what we're doing is one match is three one-minute rounds, then five one-minute rounds for what we do with 10 to 20 matches, or 10 to 15 matches on the first card, September 19th in Harris, Philadelphia, and then we're going to just build it up. Nice. I'm really looking to do tryouts, like, I'm doing this in Los Angeles this Saturday at Fortune Boxing. We're doing a little tryout there, and everybody's trying to come on board here. It's really exciting. That's really cool, is the idea that, you said, this is new celebrity boxing. Does that mean that this is, we're going to have celebrities do this? Are you looking to have regular athletes? Like you said, you're having a tryout. What's the ideal competitor here look like? So I do want real athletes. I want real, you know, former fighters or athletes that want to give it a shot, because anybody could do it. I actually train people and show them how to do the right smack. It's not just smack. Elbow behind it, there's a way you can do uppercuts, break straight. How do you throw a jab? Yeah, just a jab. Okay, so you can hit. See a jab, right? Got it. Yeah, so we're just showing people all the different moves, and I mean, I think, listen, I'm dedicated to this. I really think this is going to be the next big thing, because it's something unique. You know, my brother had something interesting. Now this appeals to everybody. Not everybody wants to get punched in the face. Now you get smacked, and so you can outsmack each other. That's why I was thinking, as you're talking that, you could see a celebrity, you know, more apt to do this, because they say, hey, you're not going to potentially get hurt as bad as you might if you were just getting punched in the face. Celebrities are getting into it. We're going to do celebrity smacks like that. I love that, especially TMZ. Get you as the referee. Hey, I'd be down. You said Jack Daugherty. Jack Daugherty, obviously big on social media, huge, you know, huge, huge name in that space. Is he a partner of yours? What's the deal with Jack? Yeah, he's a small partner with the company, and, you know, he's going to be the influencer pushing it, and we're excited to see. You know, hopefully he does this thing, and he's cool. He's been doing really good recently, so I'm excited to have him and others to get on board here. Brings a high-profile name to this, too. Is he kind of a silent partner behind the scenes, or are we thinking about him potentially taking a smack back? I don't think he's going to fight, but he's more of a silent partner, you know, part of it, and we're just going to build this, and I just see this as the next big sports entertainment combat sport because they're going to battle it out, and it's, like, unique. Like, who would have thought these focus minutes that I threw into this, and it's going to be actually out smacking each other.