Human Cockfighting & Its Moral Contradictions

This week someone wrote an article requesting a ban on boxing and I could not help but agree with the arguments proposed by said individual. Boxing and certain other martial arts disciplines are the only sports which opponents are actively encouraged to strike each other’s heads, an act which can cause serious long-term brain damage or possibly death as well as damage to the eyes. There are many medical studies which have proven that boxing is an extremely dangerous sport as chronic brain damage is caused by repeated blows to the head.

One can easily argue that there are many other dangerous sports such as downhill snow skiing but the fact remains boxing is an exception because the sole purpose of the sport is to cause bodily harm and ‘knock’ your opponent out. I am not going to discuss at length the medical effects of boxing as these should be pretty obvious to anyone with an iota of commonsense and basic knowledge of the functioning and vulnerabilities of the human body irrespective of so called ‘protective gear’. It is noteworthy however that both the British Medical Association and the World Medical Association have long been calling for a ban on boxing as a sport due to the negative medical effects it has on boxers (who happen to be HUMANBEINGS).

I would however like to address the moral contradictions of people championing boxing as a sport and national governments allowing the promotion of boxing as a sport while simultaneously banning sports such as cockfighting under the pretext of ‘animal cruelty’. Cockfighting is a blood sport between two roosters, more commonly known as gamecocks and is bred specifically for the sport. The correlation between boxing and cockfighting is that just as how boxing does not necessarily result in death so too a cock fight may not necessarily end in the death of a bird however the birds do suffer physical trauma which may result in death.

In Trinidad and Tobago game cockfighting is illegal and has also been illegal in Britain since 1835 and is illegal in all 50 States of the United States of America. It is without a doubt that many animal welfare groups played an important role in seeing the establishment of laws for the prohibition of this gruesome sport and a gruesome sport it is, there is nothing entertaining about two cocks pecking each other mercilessly in a most bloody fashion. In 2007 President George W Bush signed additional Animal Fighting Legislation into law on the heels of the indictment of Atlanta Falcon’s celebrity quarter back Michael Vick for violating federal laws against competitive dog fighting, procuring and training pit bulls for fighting and engaging in the act state wide. This new legislation covered dog fighting, cockfighting and other animal fighting.

My question is how can we as the supreme intelligent specie on this planet value the lives of other species to the point that we will enact laws to prevent any kind of sport that involves the purposeful infliction of physical harm by one animal to another while at the same time promoting a sport that encourages the purposeful infliction of bodily harm by one human being to another? Why is it morally wrong for two cocks to gouge each other in the eyes but it is ok for two human beings to repeatedly punch each other in the head, eyes, chest and abdomen until blood is spilled and one is knocked unconscious? Boxing is nothing but a human form of cockfighting. It is a cruel, bloody and violent sport that should be banned forthwith! Human health cannot and should not be sacrificed for the sake of mundane human entertainment. There is something extremely perverse and rotten about human nature when we have laws against animal fighting while we actively support and promote human fighting as a sport. ©