A Blood Sport is a Blood Sport?

The other day on a site on Face Book dedicated to Pit Bulls, one person commented that everybody was against dog fighting, but how was it any different to boxing?  Was he really serious, I wondered, or just stupid?  Could he not see that there is a world of difference between the two and although this world would probably be a better place if humans did not enjoy the so called “blood sports” like boxing, of the two it was absolutely essential to outlaw only the dog fighting?  Apparently he couldn’t.  I wonder how many other people are like him.

In the first place, the most obvious difference is one of free will and choice.  A human chooses the sport of boxing.  Yes, it is true that some of them choose it because they are poor and if they were not poor they would probably elect to work at some other job that does not involve surgery at the end of every shift.  But not all of the boxers in the world have come from the ghettos – people like La Hoya came from wealthy families and chose boxing because he liked it.  But even if the reason is based on finances – there was still a choice.  Nobody put a chain around the boxer’s neck and gave him the option of fight or die.  When we return to slave societies and people can be conscripted by force to be boxers, then I might say there is no difference.  The dog is not given any choice – he is like a slave.  In fact, the very idea of giving any dog a choice in anything is ludicrous to people who support dog fighting.  They will tell you that a dog is wired to please his or her master.  That they want to fight because they know that will make their master happy.  I find this even worse that the image of Dog as Slave.  At least the slave goes to his doom in a healthy state of hatred for his tormentor.  But the thought that some human has so taken advantage of the dog’s very nature and is using his love to kill him, is obscene.  I know that if you really look at it, no dog ever signs up for any of the activities we human involve them in – but there is a difference between teaching your dog to pull a truck tyre, and teaching your dog to happily lose an eye or a litre or two of blood and perhaps an ear. By doing that an owner is betraying the very creature he is supposed to be protecting.

Secondly, when last did you hear that Muhammed Ali beat his sparring partners to death?  Or that his handler took the poor sap outside after a warm up round with Ali and kicked him to death, hung him from a tree, buried him alive, electrocuted him, drowned him or put a bullet in his head?  I am guessing never.  But that is what is done with the bait dogs – often pups stolen from yards or “rescued” from shelters – who are given to fighting dogs to practice on and then disposed of when they become so badly hurt they can’t even run to save their own lives.

In the 18^th and 19^th centuries, it was not uncommon for boxers to inflict serious injury on their opponents, just like fighting dogs.  Boxers used to fight bare-knuckled too – no protection for their groins and mouth guards were unheard of.  They frequently fought as many rounds as it took for one of them to be unable to go on and rules like no holding, no hitting below the belt, no hitting after the bell (what bell?) were not always on the books.  But, as the old cigarette advertisement used to say, we’ve come a long way, baby, and now the goal of the boxing match is no longer to kill your opponent or damage yourself beyond repair in an extravaganza of brute force and endurance.  While nowadays boxers certainly still need strength and endurance, more emphasis is placed on technique and playing by the rules.  Can the same be said for dog fights?  The only protection the dog has is his owner’s willingness to risk ridicule by grabbing his dog out of the ring before he is killed or permanently disfigured. We are applying 18^th century morality to 21^st century living.

The mortality rate at dog fights is high, even if you put aside death from injuries incurred during fighting, or death of the bait dogs mentioned above.  This is because dogs that can't or won't fight and win are killed. One person on this same site said in another thread that any puppy that had faults should be killed by the breeder.  He said it was the breeder’s duty to do it (he called it “culling”).  So if a breeder would be willing to look at an adorable little puppy and kill it – what do you think will happen to a scarred up older dog that is not winning any money for its owner?  People shoot or abandon race horses when they stop earning their keep – what would make the fate of an ineffectual fighting dog any different?  If this modus operandi was true of boxing, there would be many boxers, some of whom went on to improve and become champions, who would now be six feet under ground.  In boxing, the penalty for losing is not death.

Actually the only similarity I can think of is that both sports attract criminality and the use of illegal drugs like steroids.  In boxing there is always the issue of fixed fights and the huge betting that goes on.  It would seem that steroid use in athletics these days is a given.  I understand the same thing happens with dog fighting.  It is not unusual to find illegal firearms on the persons of people organizing or attending dog fights either (sometimes because of the enormous sums of betting money on the premises).  The whole aura that dog fighting creates seems to be one of bad boy/gangsta/tough guy ethos.  It seems to attract the type of person who likes to test the limits of endurance, to see brute force, agility and “gameness” combining  into a fast moving blur of fury, who can look at gaping wounds and hurting animals and shrug it off.  People who think that because they “big up” a winning dog, because they loudly sing the praises of a champion fighter, that means they are animal lovers.  They don’t love animals or dogs or even that particular dog any more than the spectators in ancient Rome loved the gladiators.  They are just entertainment for them.