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Mike Ratliff
The master
cockfighter
By Jesse Hyde; Jan 18 2007
“The Chicken Man?” the woman behind the
counter asks. “Just go on up the road about a halfmile, like you’re fixing to go out of town. Take a
left, then a right. You’ll see the chickens.”
I’m at the Whistlestop General Store, the only
business in Blanket, a Central Texas town with a
population of 402.
Everyone, it seems, has heard of the chicken man.
And sure enough, I find the house just where she
said it would be, nestled behind an overgrown
field where a herd of white goats are munching
grass. I walk around back and knock on the door. Mike Ratliff is perhaps the greatest cockfighter
that ever lived. In 1968, he opened the only cockMike Ratliff calls me in. He’s in the living room, fighting school in America. Over the years he
sitting in his recliner, feet propped up on the foot taught an estimated 8,000 students, some from as
rest. His hands are folded across his little pot far away as the Philippines.
belly, and his clunky brown tennis shoes are covered in chicken shit. He invites me to sit and asks his wife, whom he addresses as Baby, if she can fetch
us some root beer. He’s got two jagged little scars above each of his eyes, one from a horse that kicked
him in the head when he was 18 months old, the other from a hatchet his baby brother accidentally hit
him with when he was five.
Up close, I notice he sort of looks like a chicken — nose curved like a beak, long fingernails like talons,
white hair that curls up under his hat like feathers. Across the room is Jarrel Hurst, a Ratliff protege.
He’s probably pushing 70, but based on his stature (stout) and his demeanor (no-nonsense), he could
probably whup my ass if I ever crossed him. He’s got his arms folded across his chest, skeptical of my
interest in his friend.
Ratliff is perhaps the greatest cockfighter that ever lived. In 1968, he opened the only cockfighting
school in America. Over the years he taught an estimated 8,000 students, some from as far away as the
Philippines. Then in November, at the age of 83, Ratliff announced he had taught his last class. The Humane Society rejoiced. They called it the end of an era.
“There’s not many of us left,” Ratliff says of the cockfighters he grew up with. “They’re all gone. Dead.
They’re trying to make criminals out of the rest of us.”
Roosterman No. 37
Thanks for sharing Roosterman.