Cockfighting Revival?

Cockfighting is a gruesome sport. Roosters are outfitted with razor blades on their spurs, and they try to hack each other to death.

The Oklahoma legislature outlawed the blood sport in 2002 because of its cruelty to the roosters, which are slashed and pecked to death while human spectators bet on the outcome. But State Sen. Frank Shurden, a Democrat from Henryetta and a long-time defender of cockfighting, said the ban had wiped out a $100-million industry.

He is trying to re-legitimize the sport. His plan?

To try to revive it, he has proposed that roosters wear little boxing gloves attached to their spurs, as well as lightweight, chicken-sized vests configured with electronic sensors to record hits and help keep score.

"It's like the fencing that you see on the Olympics, you know, where they have little balls on the ends of the swords and the fencers wear vests," said Shurden. "That's the same application that would be applied to the roosters."

As this well-known blogger would say, "Indeed".

Thanks to BrianF and Erica Ritter for the pointers.
Note that Reuters calls it "cockboxing".

Afterthought: Brian just wrote to me that if the industry really is worth $100m, it should lobby the state to build an arena to host the boxing matches.