"National Sports "

It is already December 31 and the time is ticking for the New Year count down. It’s just only hours before 2018 greets us. The remaining hours of 2017 must be spent well and memorable. If you’d ask me what I did during the last remaining hours of 2017, well I just did what every Filipinos do. I played Sabong (Cockfight).

Cockfight is prevalent in the Philippines. If you will ask me what should be the national sports of the Philippines I will answer Sabong not Arnis. Yes, to me Sabong should be the national sports followed by Defense of the Ancients. No hard feeling but on all traditional games and sports, sabong persisted in time. It is hard to deny but the game of sabong is in every corner of the Philippine Islands. It has a national event where you have to qualify in the regional elimination in order to participate in such event. It is like the gladiators, but the fighters are roosters.

Sabong is part of Philippines rich history. it has been a part in the lives of the Filipino people. You can even read Sabong in the novels of Dr. Jose Rizal, Noli Me Tangere and El Filibusterismo. We can never deny how Sabong take part in molding the Philippine History.

Sabong (cockfight) is where the rich and the poor are on equal footing. You seat on the same chairs, you bet on the same roosters, and you enjoy together. Nobody is prioritized on a sabong match. So, yeah I was there participating in such occasion. We have 3 roosters that will fight on the event. Out of the three, two of the roosters win. We lost the first fight but luckily in the second and third fight we won. Our rooster was on the Inilog (Meron) side.

Many people think that sabong is a form of an animal abuse. It is where a rooster fights a rooster to the death. But, if you will have to thoroughly think about it, rooster naturally fights each other to the death in the wild. It is their natural instinct that once they see another rooster they always fight each other and never stops until the other one is dead. If you think also that sabong is an abuse then try to compare the large scale murder in the manufacturing industries of chicken where chicken are killed without a chance to fight for their lives.

As I was there watching the first fight of our rooster. I was amazed and did not regret even though we lost knowing that our rooster fought hard till his death the money we bet on him. I should say Sabong is not gambling after all. It is a sport where you train your rooster, same as boxing, feed him well, and take care of him. It is about the prestige and not the money anymore.