Pugilism and Poultry: Even the Chickens Can Box in Phnom Penh

Pugilism and Poultry: Even the Chickens Can Box in Phnom Penh

Sunday is usually the day that I go out with my Khmer colleagues; we have been to an assortment of places; Restaurants, Pagodas, Bars, Nightclubs, Khmer kickboxing. But on this particular day, my friend, Buntha, promised to take me to see something really exciting. We turned down a dirt road, about twenty minutes outside of the city, and ended at a dubious looking arena in a rural farming community.

The large white man with the notebook received a lot of odd stares and a portly Khmer in a dirty T-shirt gave us the third degree. “Who are you? What are you doing here? Who told you about this place?”

I felt like a spy, sneaking in on some illicit activity that was to be kept secret from outsiders. After I had answered all of the questions to his satisfaction, the man gave me a stern warning.

“If you take any pictures, I will take your camera.”

A crowd of Khmer men stood around the waist-high fighting ring animatedly shouting, gesticulating and waving their bets in the air. We pushed to the front to get a better view, just in time to see a cock with a blue stripe leap onto the neck of a cock with a red stripe, tearing into his flesh with the sharp metal blade attached to his foot.

The blue rooster was clearly the superior combatant. He grabbed red’s throat in his beak and dragged him to the ground, kicking and pecking at his face repeatedly. The dirt floor was stained black with the aged blood of fights past.

A professional boxer may be able to look at cock fighting as an extension of boxing, but its entertainment value was escaping me at the moment. There are two opponents; blue and red, in a ring fighting for the glory of their handlers. Spectators bet money and cheer for their favourite fighter. They even use a gong to signal the beginning and end of each three-minute round, as in boxing.

But cock fighting is different. First off, the roosters do not get any of the money they win.

Secondly, there are weapons involved. In many matches, the roosters have metal spurs strapped to their foot. In other fights, called natural-spur matches, the cocks use the spur of a dead cock as their weapon.

The only analogy to professional boxing at this point would be if the opponents were allowed to hit each other with broken beer bottles. Another major difference is that where natural spur fights often end with one or both cocks sporting injuries, the metal spur fights often go to the death.

Thinking red had died, I was reviewing my chicken CPR techniques when the gong sounded, signalling the end of the round. Interestingly, instead of using a clock, the rounds are timed using a bowl with a hole in the bottom placed in a large vessel of water. It takes approximately three minutes for enough water to seep into the bowl. When the bowl has sunk to the bottom, the round is over.

The handlers separated the combatants and took them to their respective corners. When I have watched boxing matches the pugilists get a quick shoulder massage between rounds. But in cock fighting the handlers worked feats of voodoo magic. Red’s handler began by kissing his beak and kissing his wounds as he washed the limp corpse. The handler’s lips were now coated in chicken blood. Next, while mumbling some secret words, he spit first one, then another mouth full of water directly into Red’s face. The water spewed pink from the handler’s mouth mixing with the blood of the wounded animal. The magic apparently worked, dragging Red back from the point of death. When the handler lovingly blew the third mouthful of water in Red’s face, Red suddenly perked up. Not only did he return to life, but he was able to answer the bell for the next round.

Well, during the next round Red lost.

Some of the gamblers began grumbling about my camera again. I had not taken a single photo and yet people apparently wanted me to leave. An older Khmer man signalled for me to come and sit with him. “Anything you want to know, you can ask me.” He said in passable English.

The crowd backed off. I learned later that he was a high ranking general and that I was to remain under his protection for the rest of the match.

“Fighting roosters are generally between eight months and a year old,” my new friend explained. “Fights last for four three-minute rounds. Metal spur fights are much faster than natural spur fights, which could go on and on with no clear winner.” He went on to explain that there were various species of chickens. “The cocks from Vietnam have spurs, whereas the ones from Thailand do not.” For this reason they fought in separate rings.

After the fight special doctors worked on the birds, stitching the wounds and caring for them so that they would live to fight another day. All of the men crowded around the medical table, arguing and replaying the exciting moments of the fight. Money changed hands and it was clear that betting was a huge part of the game.

“Did you bet any money?” asked my new friend.

“I would have, but I heard someone paid the red cock to take a dive.”

“Take a dive?” he asked in astonishment. “Do you mean someone paid the red cock to throw the fight?”

“Oh yeah, I heard he owed money all over town. Throwing the fight was the only way out.”

My new friend did not know what to make of me. In real boxing if a fighter is suspected of taking a dive once he will lose credibility and never be able to fight again. “Maybe Red will give up fighting and get a job in the movies,” I suggested.

“Maybe you should go back to Phnom Penh and watch the kickboxing,” he proposed, not too unkindly.

I was glad to have seen the cock fighting once as a cultural experience. But in the future I think I will stick with the chicken on restaurant menus. .