People in northeast Thailand or Isaan wake up very early. During my visits I’m up at or before sunrise and not by choice. The neighbors keep their rooster steps away from where I sleep and I’m convinced that it is the rooster that wakes up all other roosters in the village. Shortly after sunrise every rooster in the village is crowing, cows are mooing, and people scurrying. Since roosters aren’t necessary for egg production I asked why don’t they just get rid of the noisy bird and stick with hens? I was told he’s a pet and a fighting bird. I immediately thought photographing cock fights would be interesting. And it was.
A cock fighting arena with tiered concrete seats and seat numbers in Pla Pak, Thailand. Click the picture to jump straight to a slideshow.
First and foremost, I’m not a cock fighting proponent or any type of animal fighting proponent. I wasn’t a fan of the actual fighting, although I did appreciate experiencing the whole scene - walking down a dirt trail in the middle of nowhere, half way around the planet from home, and into something I’ve never seen or experienced before, and trying to put together a set of pictures depicting the scene.
Having never been to a cock fight, I didn’t know what to expect. From what I had read or heard in news reports at home, they are a bloody fight to the end, so I was mentally prepared for that. Fortunately that wasn’t the case. Like any fight, the cock fights were violent, but after watching for a while I realized they were no more violent than professional boxing matches, especially the Boom Boom Mancini vs. Kim Duk-Koo title match I watched on broadcast TV years ago or Mike Tyson going canibal on Evander Holyfield. And the way the birds were prepped before fighting and cared for afterwards reminded me of boxing as well.
Cock fighting is legal in Thailand and there are rules governing it. The fights I saw were stopped when one bird was decidedly weaker, defeated, not defending himself, or twenty minutes were up. There were judges calling the bouts. There was no fighting to the end. The spurs on the bird’s legs were taped over, protecting the opponent. In the fight to the end matches you hear about in the U.S. or other places, it is typical for the spurs to have blades or sharp spikes taped to them, turning them into a bloody weapons. Going into this, that’s what I expected to see but fortunately the exact opposite was true. Using spurs or blades is illegal. Outside of the ring, birds are treated very well, like pets. I was surprised at how calm they were.
I ended up visiting two fights, the first in a very small village named Nong Tao. Nong Tao is nothing more than a bend in a small country road with the smallest of market. We parked the car in the weeds and walked down a trail to a clearing where we found a bunch of motor bikes and a small crowd gathered around a cock pit. A woman was running a concession stand. While there we learned of a larger arena near a small town named Pla Pak. We visited that site a few days later. The main cock pit had a few rows of arena style seating.
You can click here to see a flash slideshow of forty or so images from the fights. Or you can click through the much smaller set of thumbnails below.
i also have been to see cock fighting & been to houses to see birds trained & yes they are very well looked after