Cockfighting in Bacolod

I’ve never really understood cockfighting. My exposure to it was purely incidental—the byproduct of spending childhood summers in Iloilo, where sabong was woven into the fabric of daily life.

I remember spotting a pit stationed between a food court and the old Barotac Nuevo Cinema. It happened as I was filtering through the crowd out of pure curiosity. In other towns, I’d stumble upon informal street fights: tight circles of men screaming obscenities and throwing crumpled bills over a bloodstained patch of dirt. I was even brought in as a ringer for a major tournament once. Perks of the family.

Yet, the mechanics of it remained a mystery to me. The chaos was orchestrated by bookies called Kretongs or Kristos—so named because they pose with their arms outstretched like Christ on the cross. They would unleash a cacophony of shouting, barking the words meron and wala'y into the humid air. Gamblers signaled back with an intricate sign language of fingers and hands. Three fingers up meant 3,000 pesos; three fingers down meant 300. Or maybe it was the reverse. Either way, I kept my hands firmly in my pockets.

What blew my mind wasn't the violence of the birds, but the genius of the Kretongs. They operated purely on memory, cataloging hundreds of rapid-fire bets from a chaotic crowd without a single piece of paper.

With that kind of mental bandwidth, what the fuck are they doing in a cockpit?