Ubud is the cock fighting capital of Bali, and the locals don’t try to conceal it. You see tell tale signs that Balinese love this sport, which is more than a pastime writes Anne Anderson and I.T.B.
” Ejo Ejo!” shouts a crowd hungry for blood and fast profits. The cockfight handlers hold up their cocks and this time another raw reverberates around the stadium. “Gasal, gasal!”
Outstretched hands wave wads of money, and the blood curling yells of 2000 fanatical fans urge a white rooster on. Then comes the response, the gamblers betting on the red rooster.
This is entertainment at its best, a gruesome sport with money and blood in the mix, a volatile cocktail of hi jinx and four-inch spurs attached to the fighting cocks for good measure.
Driving around Ubud, a man on a bike beside me hugs his white cock close to him, as he turns on to the main road. A man waiting to cross the street is wearing batik swirling with red roosters. And outside the city, in the villages, its common to see locals putting their roosters through mock fights, testing their mettle against other cocks.
I tell my landlord here that I had spent a week on Koh Tao in Thailand, covering the Thai cock fighting lifestyle. Every day, over my morning coffee, he would give me tips on where the fights were. “Maff, get there before midday” was the tip today. It’s the largest stadium in Ubud, holding 2000 people, entry fee 20 000 Rupiah, a ten-minute scooter ride away. He says its where the Balinese do tajin, gambling.
In three days I had been to three pits. I’d never come across such avid breeders and fans, nor seen so much money flying around. At one small ring next to a temple, I met a distinguished man. He was a gentleman, a man from another era. ‘You came here to watch the cock fighting?” I asked him, looking at the Ralph Laurent cap he wore, the only signal of his stature and standing.
He told me he came to cock fight gatherings for the joy of being around other Balinese, “simple rice farmers, and time out from running my family business in Ubud. “ But he made it quite clear that he never partook in tajin, which is gambling in Balinese. He adds that cock fighting is a very old sport. “The King’s of Ubud use to play it, and the tradition has continued to present day.”
Though the Indonesian government outlawed Sabung Ayah, as cock fighting is known in Java, in 1981, in Ubud cockfighting is here to stay, its origins entwined in ceremony and history. It was once a source of income for Kings, who allowed their dominions to raise their funds from gambling.
Perhaps the distinguished man was from their lineage. Now, though, ten percent of the gambling proceeds go towards the building of local infrastructure. Balinese cockfighting also fits into Hindu ceremonies offering blood or water to the gods. Taboraj, the cockfighting ceremony, sacrifices chickens to appease bad spirits.
The fight to death is about to begin. Thais love their cock fighting, and have magazines devoted to the sport, and onsite veterinarians to stich back together the fighting cocks ripped to shreds. But in Bali, when the rooster loses, it’s chicken stock. “Good meat,” said one breeder. These fighters are fed only the best.
Today’s compound is next to a temple too. Outside the stadium, the police were hovering. Money changed hands. Steroids were a hot item, and so were quail eggs. A few nights back I went to a wedding. One man was prodding me to put down my camera and dance too. Today the same man was here at the cock ring. “Men’s business!” he said, and gave me a wink.
Inside, young ladies walked graceful amongst the sweaty crowd in the pit, selling smokes, freshly cut fruit and drinks, balanced on their heads on trays. No beer on the menu here. Balinese take their gambling seriously.
Sometimes foreign tourists would pop their heads in, look for a few minutes, and walk out in disgust. Blood was splattered all over the place. The heady mixture and the tribal gathering, made you realize that you weren’t at a shopping mall looking for designer bags.
The judges were sitting in front of me on a platform. They banged a gong when one of the cocks was wounded, before another round was decided. Next to one of the judges were the fresh remains of a losing cock. Dead meat, and a reminder of what damage can be done when you attach a four-inch razor sharp knife to a rooster’s feet. The handlers attach the razor sharp knives with a ball of red string and white heavy duck tape.
In Thailand, I had witnessed fights lasting five rounds or more. Here in Bali, the roosters were lucky to make it past the first round before getting slashed to pieces. One minute, and each fight was over.
The dead cock was unceremoniously thrown to the corner of the fighting ring. A man plucked it , so that the winners could eat them at home. The man responsible for plucking the defeated chicken receives 10,000 rupiah. He also hired the taji, the knives attached to the chickens’ spurs.
Before the second fight begins, I jump in the ring. A concerned man tells me to get out, “It’s dangerous!” As the fighting cocks got closer to where I am standing, a tornado of feathers and glistening steal, I quickly push through the handlers for the safety of the exit. Then the gong sounds, and the white cock is stone dead.
The third fight was about to commence. The fighting cocks were displayed and then the fight began. The white rooster ran for the corner. But this white rooster was spared, for another day. I quietly gloated over Whitey’s win.
Ayu Put Eviyanti, one of the sellers, 18, and a temple dancer, asked me in English where I was from. I say Australian. It transpires that this young lady who is studying English in Denpasar to better herself, and works a few days a week, helping her parents sell at the cockfight venues.
So what does she think about the brutal sport of cockfighting? “During the ceremony,” she says, “the sport has religious significance, and the death of the roosters is a sacrifice for the gods. But outside that, cockfighting is just another excuse for the Balinese to gamble.”
She’s not wrong. As a side event, and just as much zealous, are little betting pits. Puffs of clove cigarette and incense rise up from a group who are laying cash on a colorful mat, which has an assortment of visual images, from a naked lady to Ragoda, the evil spirit of Hindu mythology.
Ayu says that her family, coming from a tradition of holy men, does trances at religious ceremonies. “I’m a faith healer, and when I’m in a trance, meditating with the spirits, I go crazy and can’t stop screaming.”
A few days later I was able to witness these trances at her village in Bang Li, a half hour driver from Ubud. which seems quite famous in Bali for that.
“Bali likes Australian, but Indonesia doesn’t,” says another man, who is resting on the rails of the cock fighting ring with a pair of crutches beside him, He shows me his scarred knee. “It was broken in three sections after I got hit by a truck,” he explains.
Later that the evening I saw the man who was flashing lots of cash at the cock fight today. I wondered what his fate was. We were at Ubud’s cool spring water where the locals bathe and cool down in the cold water that comes from the nearby caves. He told me that he lost 700,000 rupiah, but tomorrow he would be back in the pits to chance his luck again.
No doubt, cock fighting is a past time that some may say personifies human’s struggle for existence at the expense of the roosters breaded to appease the lust of their Hindu gods. But the locals might argue otherwise.
The pain and the glory and the ugliness, Balinese cock fighting has it all.