"If you don't fight chickens, they go downhill," he said. "To keep 'em good, you've gotta fight 'em and recognize the good ones."
HERE in Araneta Coliseum, the arena that has held some of the Philippines' marquee events, including a Mass by Pope John Paul II, rich and poor roared and winced at the clattering flurry of attacks, and hushed as a winning rooster pondered its final move.
In the wings, gaffers tied blades called \o7tari\f7 to roosters' legs; the softer spurs they were born to attack with had been trimmed to rounded nubbins to make way for the steel blades tempered to killer strength with alloys such as titanium and cobalt.
Each new competitor, also shorn of its red comb and wattle, was cradled like a fragile child in its handler's arms on the walk to the cockpit from a gloomy hallway. A large, wooden statue of a crucified Christ decorated with fragrant jasmine garlands stood watch at one end.
Sparring roosters, known as heaters, pecked at the fighting cocks to get them riled up, as handlers restrained them by their tail plumes and bettors and \o7kristos \f7waved and hollered at each other like frantic floor traders during a stock market meltdown.
In the final seconds before the starting buzzer, a male nurse dressed in white swabbed the hackles of each fighter to test for any dirty tricks, such as feathers laced with cyanide. Then the cocks' \o7tari \f7were unsheathed, and a cockpit technician wiped each blade with gauze soaked in rubbing alcohol.
Primed for blood, the roosters were released from either side of two center lines. Some crowed as the crowd bellowed. Others went straight for the kill, flapping above their opponents, wildly stabbing at anything they could strike with their blades.
When the fighters lay panting in the dirt, the referee, or \o7sentenciador\f7, gently picked both up by the hackle feathers at arm's length, and gently brought them to head-to-head, waiting for one to make the regulation two pecks needed for an outright victory. In the few bouts in which neither rooster had the strength, or will, left for that, the \o7sentenciador\f7 declared a draw. And the bettors moaned.
At 4 a.m. on the final night, the 2007 World Slasher Cup was finally clinched, with a record of seven wins and a draw, by the eighth rooster entered by Wilson Ong, a Philippine businessman.
His cock died soon after pecking the limp, bleeding final challenger twice. Handler Alfred Pangilinan, 36, cradled the dead winner in his arms for the long trip home to Guagua, a town 50 miles north of Manila.
There, on the edge of the training farm, in a graveyard of champions, Pangilinan dug a deep hole and buried the bird.
paul.watson@latimes.com
Watson recently was on assignment in the Philippines.
