Cock Fighting

A few weeks ago a friend of mine went to a cock fight. He told me all about it and gave me his pictures, so it´s almost as if I were there. Mexico allows cock fighting and bull fighting as they are considered cultural heritage. All other forms of animal fighting or abuse are outlawed, including dog fighting as portrayed in the film Amores Perros. 

The arena:

The weigh in. All cocks must be weighed prior to fighting. Most of the cocks were around 1.5 kilos. Prior to fighting many of the feathers on the cocks´ back are removed so as to prevent over-heating. This particular type of fighting is not with razor blades, but rather with artificial claws. The fights can last from 3 minutes to 30 minutes. With razor blades, the fights are usually over within the first minute. 

Attaching the artificial claw. Roosters naturally have a claw here, but it is shaved off and then this fake claw is secured with wax and string.

Just as with high school wrestlers, the roosters are fasting prior to weigh-in  in order to make weight. Once they weigh-in, they are put into their cages and they go to town on their food. One rooster was given a hard boiled egg, which seemed to me like cannibalism, but I guess there are other things that are more appalling about cock fighting than the pre-fight meal. Again, this is all hearsay from my friend. 

So anyway, the birds get introduced to each other and immediately start fighting. It is the natural instinct of two males to fight when they are in each other´s presence. Similar to beta fish. The fighting technique involves attempting to peck out the opponents eyes, these are like your jabs, followed up with round house kicks to the opponents face with your artificial claw.

Jab

Jab

Round house

It gets pretty bloody pretty quick. The roosters faces are quickly covered in blood from the various pecks and round houses.

Round house

It is not uncommon for one or both of the roosters to lose an eye or both. In one fight, both roosters were blind and could not find each other. After a few minutes, the fight was called a draw by the referee. If an owner can see that his rooster is going to lose, he can throw in the towel. Often this occurs if the rooster has gone blind. The owner values the rooster´s genes enough that he prefers to keep his blind rooster alive so that he can still breed back at the stable. Out of the 6 fights, 4 were called off, and in two, the fight was to the death.

It is a blood sport. This is the blood from a rooster whose owner threw in the towel.

This fight went to the death.

While I realize I should be more appalled by cock fighting, the tradition, culture, and pride behind it makes a powerful argument, similar to how the pageantry behind bull fighting makes it somehow acceptable. The owners took great care and pride in their birds and meticulously trained and bred them. They had extensive records of the genealogy of all their birds. Fighting cocks are trained like athletes and had regular trainings with dummy roosters and plain old conditioning. One owner described an exercise he called rooster burpees.

Anyway, my friend said he won´t go again, but he said it was a worthwhile experience once.