Pugalism of the fowl kind

I figured that I had to see some cock fighting before I leave the Philippines. It's a big betting sport over here and everywhere you go you see and hear cocks that are bred for fighting. The are a lot of arenas for the fighting and you even see it broadcast on TV sometimes.

The fighting itself is on the brutal side if you're a chicken. The fit one of the feet of the cocks with a small blade. In the process of fighting, the cocks try to get on top of one another and stab each other with their respective blades. Eventually one of them can't fight anymore because of its injuries or it dies. The winnings are split between the owners in a 70%-30% split. Obviously the owner of the winning cock gets the large end of the winnings and also takes the losing cock home for dinner.

It was an interesting experience. The crowd gets really excited at the betting stage with lots of hollering and gesturing. The two opponents show their cocks to each other to get them riled up and the people starting picking who they think is going to win. I'm not sure how it all really works but there are some bookies who aren't part of the organized betting of the arena and take bets on the side. It is gambling and there are some shady characters around so, if you're going to go leave the important valuables at home and keep everything in your front pockets.

I took a video of the whole process for one of the fights. Have a look, it seems that cock fighting can be a romantic experience for some.



Here are some pictures too. The lighting was low, I had to settle for the 400 ISO setting on my camera so they look a little fuzzy.

Betting before the fight...



The clean up station where they fix up the cocks that survived the fight:



Owners meet and agree to have their cocks fight each other beforehand.



Everybody watches in suspense as the fight goes on:






I'm sure a bunch of you were giggling as your read this. So here's a write up on the word cock, which shows up in this post 11 times.

Here's one last one. I'll leave it up to you to provide the caption for it in your comments. Try not to be too vulgar.