24
Mike Ratliff
The Master
Cockfighter
...continued from last issue
At
the age of ten, he and his
brother, who were out on
horseback hunting for raccoons in the
Texas brush, rode up on a circle of
Model Ts down by a creek. Within the
circle, a group of men were gathered
around a pair of roosters fighting. It
was the first cockfight Ratliff ever saw, Partners Douglas Bruce and Mike Ratliff. They’re coming
to the Philippines.
and he was hooked.
Shortly after, he was given his first fighting rooster by a man named G.C. Byrd.
The rooster won his first fight, to a chicken a pound heavier, which was an extraordinary achievement. Ratliff was so proud he says he named the bird after the
man who gave it to him and kept the bird until the day it died.
He would never name another rooster.
Ratliff was always asking other chicken fighters their secrets, but they would never
share them. He eventually found an old man who would. "Son," he said, putting
his arm around Ratliff's shoulder, "on the fight day, give them all the yeller corn
they can eat. He'll eat all he can hold. Give him all the water he can drink, too."
Ratliff was thrilled. He thought he'd never lose another fight. But he was wrong.
The old man was lying to him. Filling the bird with corn and water didn't make him
strong -- it made him weak. He could barely hold his head up to fight.
When Ratliff realized he'd been lied to, he decided he'd figure out for himself what
made one fighting rooster superior to the other. After fights, he cut the losing
roosters open to determine what they were eating that had made them weak. He
learned how to recognize the best fighting birds on his farm. He looked for cocks
with a natural tendency to fly above their opponents and strike them with their
spurs, a claw-like appendage that grows naturally from the side of a rooster's leg.
Cocks that struck their opponents on the top of the back, where the vital organs
are, were selected for the official rooster-fighting competitions, called derbies.
Roosterman No. 38
Thanks for sharing Roosterman.