On a current Sunday in the provincial city of Cabuyao, in the center of an old arena painted turquoise and surrounded by ascending rows of wooden benches rubbed smooth from years of use, are two men, each cradling a rooster.
A buzzer sounds, and the roosters are released. They head straight for every other. There’s a tousle of red wings and feathers, and suddenly, among the roosters begins to hobble. The white one veers away and stumbles to the ground. The referee picks up both roosters by the scruffs of their necks to see if there’s still any fight left in them. There‘s. Another flurry of feathers, and the white one — the one that looked dead on its feet seconds ago — deals a deadly kick to the red rooster. The fight mores than after 24 seconds.
Borick Alcazar owns the white rooster. Winning is always good, but winning as the underdog is doubly satisfying. Alcazar grins from ear to ear. He picks up his rooster, accepts a bit adulation from the crowd, and walks from the arena.
Sabung Ayam has been around for centuries. When Ferdinand Magellan arrived in 1521, it was already a roaring spectacle. Because of this, the culture around it‘s deeply entrenched in Philippine life, particularly in the provinces, where Sabung Ayam belongs to the daily scrabble for income.
Outside, Alcazar lays his rooster onto the lap of a guy with bloody hands sitting beside a box of needles and string. He’s the arena’s surgeon, and he rifles through the feathers looking for injuries. The rooster is docile, stunned with pain. There’s a little puncture wound at the thigh. He plucks off the surrounding feathers to reveal an opening and the bumpy yellowish skin around it. The surgeon pulls a lengthy curved needle and black thread through the skin, closes it up, knots it off, and moves on the three-inch long gash at the chicken’s thick breast. He cleans that off with cotton balls and tacks it shut with a crude cross stitch.
'Just making a living' : Sabung Ayam Online a lifestyle in Philippines
The chicken surgeon charges 200 pesos — about $4. 50 in U. S. currency — for every chicken he stitches up. There's no charge if the animal dies. A dead rooster gets sent five feet away to the butcher, who de-feathers it, guts it, and puts it in a plastic bag, ready to be stewed.
Alcazar’s rooster concerns, however, and he gently lays it in a box punctured with holes. It’s a winning Ayam now, and he’ll feed it an option diet of hard boiled eggs and carrots, give it vitamin and antibiotic shots, and in three or five months, it’ll await the ring again — a wiser fighter from having survived.
Back in the arena, it’s intermission and the spectators are throwing coins and bills into the ring. It’s a collection for a fellow sabongero (cockfighter) who’s sick at the hospital and needs his bills paid. Sabung Ayam are also held for funerals, where a portion of the cash that changes hands is offered to the family of the dead. Burial is so expensive in the Philippines that many people can only afford to rent a casket throughout of a wake.
En masse picks up the coins up from the sand, another round of Sabung Ayam starts heating up. The arena fills with the determined yelling of small-time bookies, called kristos. They flash complicated hand signals across the room, making bets large and small. A few of them help bosses, others just on their own, but all them are doing it for the extra cash.
Teody rests on the last row of the arena, his flip-flopped feet propped up on the wooden bench before him. He works as a chauffeur, and doesn't have money to bet today after a harsh week. He’s here for the fun, to chat with the guys, to have a couple of laughs. He's hoping a buddy wins so hopefully he can have a beer and eat among the losing roosters.
Inquired about his largest win, he sighs with nostalgia : “It was ago. 12, 000 pesos.
“I bought a washering, ” he recalled. “And I kept a bit for beer. ”
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