This handsome guy is all over the Philippines. He and his brothers have actual lives, but they also live in the background of a thousand customer service calls happening right now. There is another source of their fame: cockfighting.
I have never been to a cockfight, but I've passed cockfighting arenas in the province dozens of times. These rowdy affairs are called sabong for (usually) legal contests and tupada or tigbakay for illegal fights.
Sabong: roosters kill each other with spurs on their legs and men smoke and drink and gamble, often spending money they can ill afford. The atmosphere is the attraction, allure of quick cash on a whim, on a whispered confidence, on your pride and joy — your rooster.
I've witnessed cockfighting arenas from the outside — hundreds of mopeds parked, men drunk on Red Horse and Ginabra, staggering victorious with a pocket of cash. Or despondent, dead combatant cradled in the crook of their arm girding for the long ride home and uncomfortable explanations.
I don't know anything about cockfighting. I did pay attention to the relevant episodes of the Shield and Justified, and I'm pretty sure there is a Harry Crews story about cockfighting somewhere in his oeuvre.
Crews wrote about cockfighting in 'merica, but I'm surprised to learn that cockfighting Magellan's crewmen first documented cockfighting. Wikipedia reports, "…it was during Magellan's voyage of discovery of the Philippines in 1521 when modern cockfighting was first witnessed and documented for Westerners by the Italian Antonio Pigafetta, Magellan's chronicler, in the Kingdom of Taytay." This begs the question of modern cockfighting vs. the ancient version, but that's a question for another day.
Besides being pleasantly surprised by a pair of cocks attached to the wet market where the buko juice guy sets up later, cocks are a constant pain in my professional ass. Nothing says "professional" like a rooster crowing his lordly authority and virility while a caller tries to cancel their online subscription since they've lately been disenfranchised due to COVID or lost their job to outsourcing.
Thankfully we've solved the issue with noise suppression software and upgraded headsets, and I can simply consider these roosters and hope their fighting days are behind them.
