It’s the replay, caught with super-slo-mo cameras, that makes it exactly the kind of weird I like: We see the hand approaching the face and then the impact. BAM! Phillips’s face is briefly displaced off his skull, his neck skin stretching, his face in this moment deformed like a rubber mask—that’s how unlike a face it looks!—and then suddenly it snaps back on. And in that extended instant we see the light going out. His face is almost peaceful as he falls in the aftermath of such a sudden blast of pain. The clip ends and we don’t see what happens after.
Notes:
A slew of unusual, obscure, and in some cases brand-new sports rise to prominence around the world, but especially in the hot US sports market, in recent years.
This is almost certainly the result of 1. fresh money being injected into sports markets (in part because sports betting is getting the green light in many parts of the US right now), 2. fresh exposure via socially spread content, and 3. the priciness of traditional sports, which have become big-ticket items for streaming companies, which then have to earn that money back. These new sports, in contrast, are cheap to soak up and come with less commercial baggage (at least for now).
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