Did basketball team Indiana Fever sign up Gertrud Schlaghammer to protect star player Caitlin Clark? No, that's not true: The announcement about the "former Olympic Greco Roman wrestling silver medalist and ex-German special forces operative" was posted on a Facebook page dedicated to sports satire. There was no such announcement on the actual Indiana Fever X account, despite the fake screenshot of one that was part of the joke post.
The joke first appeared in a Facebook post (archived here) published by "The Sports Memery" on June 20, 2025 that read:
The Indiana Fever have officially signed Gertrud Schlaghammer, a 6'8" former Olympic Greco Roman wrestling silver medalist and ex-German special forces operative best known for her role in Operation Quiet Fist that eradicated an invasive species of bears from the Alps without weapons.
Schlaghammer, 39, has not played organized basketball since middle school.
Known in international combat sports circles as "Esel-Halsschlag" ("Donkey throat puncher"), Schlaghammer isn't expected to get many minutes until Clark is hard fouled. Then the plan is for her to not leave the court until she's ejected.
"She doesn't speak much English," said Caitlin Clark, while removing an ice pack from her eye. "But when we first met she told me 'No one touch you now tiny sexy bird lady.' I cried."
Schlaghammer will make her debut Thursday night against the Valkyries, assuming their players show up.
This is what the post looked like on Facebook at the time of writing:
(Source: Facebook screenshot taken on Sat Jun 21 07:12:48 2025 UTC)
The description of the Facebook page "The Sports Memery" (archived here) explicitly says everything on the page is fake and meant for entertainment:
Satire / Parody & memes. Nothing is real here. Sports are hilarious, come laugh with us.
Snippets of the post or the image that went with it were widely shared on social media, with several people believing it was real.
The image contained a fake social meda post appearing to come from the official @IndianaFever account on X.
(Image source: cropped screenshot of a post by "The Sports Memery")
However a search for the word "Schlaghammer" on that account returned no results (archived here).
AI detection tool Hive said it was 98.1% likely the full image was generated using AI.
(Image: Screenshot of Hive results)
