Did Caitlin Clark "clap back" at Angel Reese, knocking her, or a Golden State Valkyries player, to the floor? No, that's not true: This video clip is AI-generated. It was based on a real altercation between Indiana Fever's star Caitlin Clark and the Valkyries forward Janelle Salaun during a May 22, 2026, game in Indianapolis. Real game footage was used to generate an AI clip of a knockdown punch that didn't happen.
The fake video clip appeared in a post (archived here) published by the X account @Frida_B78 on July 29, 2026. It was captioned:
Angel Reese kept talking tough...
Until someone finally clapped back 😂 what do you think who is that??
This is a screenshot from the video:
(Image source: @Frida_B78 post on X.)
The video is 1 minute, 1 second long, and opens with the clip of the knockdown punch in question. The video contains about 20 short clips showing rough or unsportsmanlike conduct in women's basketball. The scope of this fact check is limited to the one three-second scene (pictured above) which appears twice in this video, at the 1-second mark and later at the 41-second mark.
The caption of the post and the text caption on the video suggest that the player in the black jersey, who appears to get punched, is Angel Reese. It is not. Angel Reese is forward for Atlanta Dream, No. 5 (archived here). The Golden State Valkyries forward, No. 13, is Janelle Salaun (archived here). Caitlin Clark, No. 22, is guard for Indiana Fever (archived here).
An altercation really did happen just before halftime during the May 22, 2026, Golden State Valkyries vs. Indiana Fever game at Gainbridge Fieldhouse in Indianapolis. It involved Salaun and Clark, and resulted in both players receiving technical fouls (archived here). Clark swatted at the ball, Salaun elbowed at Clark. No punches were thrown, no one fell down.
On May 22, 2026, sports reporter James Boyd posted a video on X (archived here) that not only shows what happened on the court, it appears to be the source material used to make the AI fake (embedded below). The video stands out because it shows a replay on the jumbotron cube in the home team's arena. The top margin above the video is the top panel of the jumbotron display which is angled in the cropping of the video. It shows a red-on-red "Indy" background with scrolling and rotating "Indy" and "F" logos. Boyd's video also clearly shows Salaun's name and No. 13 on her Valkyries jersey.
#Fever star Caitlin Clark and #Valkyries forward Janelle Salaun were both given techs for this dustup just before halftime. pic.twitter.com/SMDudLHFB6
-- James Boyd (@RomeovilleKid) May 23, 2026
In the fake video clip (GIF below), the same angled red margin with logos appears above the video footage--but critically these logos are not animated, remaining static throughout the fake knockdown punch sequence. The indistinct number on the black jersey resembles a 1 or 7, and the team name seems to begin "VAQU". The red jersey of a player in the background had illegible white markings.
(Image source: GIF from @Frida_B78 post on X.)
Lead Stories uploaded the clip in question to the AI-generated content detection tool at Hive Moderation (archived here). The tool determined with 95.7% confidence that the clip was AI-generated (pictured below).
(Image Source: Hive Moderation.)
