Living There
The blood, the guts, the glory, the smell of fried chicken. Just another Thursday night cock-fight in San Juan, Puerto Rico. A gentlemens sport, as Cock fighting is referred, is a huge tradition in Puerto Rico. Since 1933, these cocks have been getting after it.
We found ourselves at one of the largest cockfighting arenas in Puerto Rico, Club Gallistico, just in time for some of the action.We arrived at the arena around 6 pm, slightly intoxicated because we weren’t sure what to expectant of all this… I’m from Alabama, I wasn’t raised on a farm, and yet I haven’t been to a cock-fight before.
Now before you say anything, cockfighting is legal in Puerto Rico, unlike in the States, so don’t get all worked up about it. Oh and if you find cockfighting cruel and unjust, just letting you know your U.S. tax dollars are paying for the arena that host cock-fights, so thanks.
We entered the arena and paid the 5$ entrance fee, grabbed a couple of drinks, and headed to our seats. We were ready to experience our first cock-fight. It was chaos.A bunch of Puerto Ricans screaming at each other placing bets, stacks of hundreds being thrown around , me and my buddy just getting hammered, all while two roosters fought to the death, It was everything I expected it to be. Unfortunately neither of us could speak spanish so we had no idea what was going on. We did figure out that bets were placed by a hand raise, or finger motion. We were sure not to make any quick motions of the hands, before we ended up placing a ten or twenty thousand dollar bet that if we lost would turn us into piñatas.
The coolest thing I thought was how the roosters were brought into the arena. They are slowly lowered into the arena in see through boxes, while there theme song plays. Just kidding they don’t have theme songs ,but that would have been pretty awesome. To bad they don’t do this in the Octagon, that would be sweet.
So after the roosters are dropped into the arena, the owners will take them out of the box and slap them in the face with a stuffed chicken a few times to piss them off. Then they are shoved back into the boxes, the bell rings, and the fight begins. It’s a fight to the death, or when one of the chickens doesn’t move for more than a minute. Which usually means there dead. After this the roosters are picked back up, the winner living to fight another day, and loser turning into fried chicken, that’s sold at the arena I’m guessing. The fights don’t last long, maybe just a couple of minutes at most, but that’s just enough to experience in my opinion. So after a couple fights, we were ready to go explore what San Juan’s nightlife had to offer. Cockfighting in Puerto Rico makes for a pretty interesting and crazy pre game experience, if your bored and looking for something to do.
