Death in the Afternoon

[rowan]

Should there be a worldwide ban on bullfighting? It's been outlawed in most places already. It's questionable as to whether this is a sport at all, or just animal cruelty like fox hunting, cock fighting and dog fighting. I attended a bullfight once in Malaga purely out of curiosity. That was almost two decades ago, just after I'd arrived in Europe. I can't say I was particularly moved either way, personally. But the skill and courage of the matadors, and also the horsemanship, was beyond question. Ernest Hemingway's Death in the Afternoon is about the only thing I've ever read on the subject, and it's quite a fascinating read, too, providing an insight into bullfightings origins in the ampitheatres of the Roman Empire through to the 'maestros' of the late 19th and early 20th centuries (Hemingway's own time). As recently as the late 19th century other animals were still in use, including lions and even elephants on occasions. Hemingway described the difference between a fighting bull and the average farm stud as being comparable to that between a wolf and a dog, and as often as not they came out on top against the lions. Many of the matadors, meanwhile, were actually gypsies and invariably wound up dying in the arena. In common with the African-American domination of boxing throughout the previous century, it provided one of the few ways out of the ghetto for a downtrodden minority, and many made the ultimate sacrifice. So perhaps we shouldn't gloat upon their misfortunes, as some do, and blame the fans and spectators who attend the fights regularly and thereby keep it all going.

A Spanish bullfighter died after he tripped in the ring and was gored by the bull in south-western France, according to media reports.

Spanish court overturns Catalonia's bullfighting ban

Ivan Fandino, 36, was taken to hospital, but later died from his injuries, Spanish news agency EFE reported, citing sources close to the Basque matador’s entourage.

Fandino stumbled during a fight in Aire-sur-l’Adour on Saturday after he tripped on a cape used in a turn to engage and distract the specially bred fighting bull. The animal then pierced the matador’s torso with its horns, EFE said.

He is the second Spanish bullfighter to die in the ring in the past year. Victor Barrio was killed after being gored by a bull in front of spectators last July, the first time since the early 1990s a professional matador had died in the ring in Spain.

Every year several people die in Spanish summer festivals involving bulls running through towns or being chased in the countryside, which often attract tourists.

Topics https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/ ... -bullfight

[rowan]

[kk67]

Hemingway was a posturing tough guy twat. I've always found his writing rather dull. He's massively overrated.
The modern version is that cage fighting idiot that married Jordan. Ernest was probably more literate but just as much of a twat.

Matadors that die...?....we all get to laugh. Yeah, laugh. It's funny.
If you actively court schadenfreude,......don't be surprised when we find it funny.
He was a pompous, self-aggrandising idiot that tortured innocent animals,......and the animal finally won against overwhelming odds. Good.

[BBD]

Customer - why the small portions of bull sweet breads?
Waiter - Sometimes Señor, the bull wins

[rowan]

Come to think of it, James Michener included a fairly lengthy chapter on the subject in his typically voluminous account of the peninsula, 'Iberia.'

Iberia was the Greek name for the region, incidentally, derived from the Ebru river in the north-east. It was long before this that the Phoenicians had named it 'Spain' after a species of hare then prevalent.

[SerjeantWildgoose]

I'd wager that neither of the animals involved in the incidents quoted by Rowan survived the day and were allowed to parade their murderous prowess afterwards. The bull gores from defensive instinct, whereas the matador butchers for the entertainment of a banal crowd of feckers who, with the assistance of sun and sangria, manage to overcome a couple of millennia of evolution.

Bull fighting? game hunting? game fishing? All for the entertainment rather than the nourishment of man and they and their supporters detract from humanity.

And Hemmingway was a cunt.

[rowan]

All for the entertainment rather than the nourishment of man and they and their supporters detract from humanity.

Indeed, but again I think you could compare it to boxing in that respect - & I will confess I used to be a fan.

As for Hemingway, I didn't agree with many of his perspectives, but he was undoubtedly a genius when it came to writing prose. One of the finests wordsmiths of the genre.

[paddy no 11]

I done the Pamplona bull run, and am ok with it.

Went to a bullfight once and would not go again, was a pretty horrible experience

[rowan]

I done the Pamplona bull run, and am ok with it.

Went to a bullfight once and would not go again, was a pretty horrible experience

Opposite of me. I'd rather sit safely in the stands than run around in front of those beasts! But once was enough for me. I've been to Pamplona, btw, but for a job interview many years ago, not the bull run. & just in case anyone is interested, I actually got offered the job, too, but opted for Barcelona instead.

[Discreet Hooker]

Just cruelty of the highest order . However , the crowds get as excited/hostile/manic as any football crowd I've seen .

You ain't however going to stop it , barbaric as it is .

[Stones of granite]

Just cruelty of the highest order . However , the crowds get as excited/hostile/manic as any football crowd I've seen .

You ain't however going to stop it , barbaric as it is .

You have as chance of stopping it as stopping New Zealanders doing a wee dance before a Rugby match. "It's my kulchur, innit"

[cashead]

If you require an animal to be tortured to death for your entertainment, you're a piece of shit. Fuck bullfighting and anyone that defends that shit can go fuck themselves.

[rowan]

If you require an animal to be tortured to death for your entertainment, you're a piece of shit. Fuck bullfighting and anyone that defends that shit can go fuck themselves.

Indeed, but again I don't see a great deal of difference between them and boxing fans - and I used to be a boxing fan myself. Now, however, I look back at those fights on Youtube sometimes and am often disgusted by what I see.

[cashead]

If you require an animal to be tortured to death for your entertainment, you're a piece of shit. Fuck bullfighting and anyone that defends that shit can go fuck themselves.

Indeed, but again I don't see a great deal of difference between them and boxing fans - and I used to be a boxing fan myself. Now, however, I look back at those fights on Youtube sometimes and am often disgusted by what I see.

A boxer knows the risks when they get into the ring, and there's an explicit understanding that they're going to punch someone while also getting fairly punched up themselves. Can you say the same about the bull in a bullfight? I somehow fucking doubt it.

Quite frankly, boxing and bullfighting is a false equivalence. Anyone that requires an animal to be slaughtered for a few yuks is a cunt.

[rowan]

I disagree. We're talking about the fans here, and the enjoyment derived from the infliction of violence and suffering of others. The basic premise is identical.

[Discreet Hooker]

I disagree. We're talking about the fans here, and the enjoyment derived from the infliction of violence and suffering of others. The basic premise is identical.

e .


The boxers have a choice and pro boxers are making a living .

I'm sure if these poor beasts had a choice they'd opt for humane killing or grazing or breeding .

Rather a silly point imo .

[cashead]

Once again, not entirely. Watching boxing is watching two consenting participants who are there of their own will. Yeah, it's violent, but that's where the comparison ends.

[rowan]

I disagree. We're talking about the fans here, and the enjoyment derived from the infliction of violence and suffering of others. The basic premise is identical.

e .


The boxers have a choice and pro boxers are making a living .

I'm sure if these poor beasts had a choice they'd opt for humane killing or grazing or breeding .

Rather a silly point imo .

It's your point which is a bit silly, and that's because you missed the one which was being made in the first place. We are talking about the fans, not the combatants.

The fans are deriving their enjoyment from a combination of skill and violence, and awaiting the same result which is the suffering and ultimate demise of the victim. There is no difference, in this respect, between boxing fans and bullfighting fans whatsoever.

[SerjeantWildgoose]

A boxer knows the risks when they get into the ring, and there's an explicit understanding that they're going to punch someone while also getting fairly punched up themselves. Can you say the same about the bull in a bullfight? I somehow fucking doubt it.

Quite frankly, boxing and bullfighting is a false equivalence. Anyone that requires an animal to be slaughtered for a few yuks is a cunt.

My thoughts exactly.

I disagree. We're talking about the fans here, and the enjoyment derived from the infliction of violence and suffering of others. The basic premise is identical.

I wasn't. Hemmingway was a cunt because he enjoyed hunting as much as being a cunt for enjoying the gruesome spectacle of a bull fight.

I boxed because I was carrying a knee injury at Sandhurst so couldn't play rugby and wasn't quite ready to join the beagling crowd. I then boxed as a young officer in my battalion. I fecking hated it and knowing both ends of a beating from equally bitter experience, I wouldn't do anything to put anyone else in that situation; and that includes watching them. Anyone who hasn't boxed and watches it for enjoyment is frankly a fucking coward; and a fucking sick coward at that. But I agree with Cashead, both boxers know what they're getting in to and comparisons with any blood sport involving an animal are crass.

[rowan]

A boxer knows the risks when they get into the ring, and there's an explicit understanding that they're going to punch someone while also getting fairly punched up themselves. Can you say the same about the bull in a bullfight? I somehow fucking doubt it.

Quite frankly, boxing and bullfighting is a false equivalence. Anyone that requires an animal to be slaughtered for a few yuks is a cunt.

My thoughts exactly.

My thoughts exactly as far as the bullfighting goes. But I would also apply the same to boxing fans. That's all. If anyone wants to defend boxing as a spectacle to me now, I'd put you in the same category as bullfighting fans - as per above description.

In fact, it's no accident that Hemingway was such a fan of both, and I believe he made the connection in one of his novels as well - 'The Sun Also Rises, I think.

[Discreet Hooker]

[rowan]

Interesting perspective:

What if a legislator introduced a bill that allowed adversaries to settle disputes by pounding each other until one was beaten senseless?

The lawmaker would be ridiculed and maybe referred to a shrink.

But the pummeling is legal when it’s called boxing — a sport with the sole purpose of beating someone into unconsciousness.

I began thinking about this again last week after Muhammad Ali died at 74, his having suffered from Parkinson’s for three decades. No one knows for sure whether all those head blows caused Ali’s deteriorating neurological condition. But no one argues they didn’t contribute, either.

As former Times sports editor Bill Dwyre wrote, “He had 61 fights and that was probably 20 too many.” Many people who never boxed get Parkinson’s, Dwyer continued, but like so many fighters, “Ali got hit in the head a lot.”

Jonathan Gottschall, a Washington & Jefferson College English instructor who took up mixed martial arts and wrote a book called “The Professor in the Cage: Why Men Fight and Why We Like to Watch,” put it this way:

“The main objective of fighting sports is to temporarily shut down the other guy’s brain. Head punches hurt what they are designed to hurt, not the face, the brain.”

I thought about this even more when I read a letter to the editor last week in The Times.

“We talk freely about the effect of head injuries on football players and our fighting forces,” wrote Joan Walston of Santa Monica. “Boxing … has been exempt… It should never be that way again.”

All this pains me because I grew up a boxing fan. Joe Louis was right up there with Babe Ruth and FDR in our house. I eagerly looked forward to “Friday Night Fights” while eating dinner on a TV tray.

But my vision of boxing became blurred when, as a young reporter for UPI, I covered a match in which a fighter was pathetically knocked down — if I recall correctly — seven times in one round. In the next round he was floored twice before the bout was mercifully stopped.

The fighter was Terry Smith, an ex-collegiate champion and alternate on the 1960 U.S. Olympic team. Ali — then named Cassius Clay — won a gold medal with that team. Smith wisely hung up his gloves soon after the thrashing and had a successful career as a deputy district attorney and boxing referee/judge.

Around then in the early 1960s, the great Times sports columnist Jim Murray — a Pulitzer Prize winner and 14-time national sportswriter of the year — covered a featherweight title fight at Dodger Stadium where the champ, Davey Moore, was beaten and soon died from brain injuries.

“Do we swallow our conscience one more time and continue to ban bullfights and cockfights while continuing to sanction prize fights?” Murray wrote. “Are animals more precious than human beings? Are duels at dawn more immoral than death in the evening? Do we sell tickets to an execution? Is this the 20th Century or the Roman Empire?”

Murray wrote eloquently about boxing and had mixed feelings.

“There is no moment in sports to rival the electric charge that goes through an audience in the moments just before the bell for a championship fight,” he once wrote.

But he stayed on boxing’s case his entire career. “Justifiable homicide,” he characterized it in 1982. “On a street corner, someone would go to jail.”

“Muhammad Ali probably was the most stunning physical specimen any sport ever produced,” Murray wrote in 1992. “Two decades later, Ali, the quick-witted, quick-tongued artist of the squared circle, would be a shambling, stumbling, stuttering, mumbling replica of himself.”

There’s no question that repeated blows to the head can damage the brain. It’s why football, hockey and baseball players wear helmets. So do amateur boxers, but not pros. In other sports, head injuries occur by accident. In boxing, it’s the whole purpose.

Louis developed dementia symptoms. The great Sugar Ray Robinson died with Alzheimer’s. There’s a long list. They used to call it being “punch drunk.”

California has had a zigzag history with boxing. The original state Constitution outlawed prize fighting. Later amateur boxing was allowed. Professional bouts occurred anyway, but underground. Finally voters legalized it in 1924.

Gov. Pat Brown tried to outlaw boxing in 1963.

“Even under ideal conditions,” he said, “it’s a brutal sport — if it can be called a sport.”

Brown’s son Jerry, the future governor, boxed in high school and once decked an opponent.

Pat Brown couldn’t get the Legislature to ban boxing. But it did tighten regulations. And Sacramento has continued to tighten them.

“Right now boxing is safer in California than ever before,” says Andy Foster, executive officer of the State Athletic Commission, which regulates boxing and mixed martial arts. “But that doesn’t mean it’s safe. This is not a safe sport. That’s why it’s regulated.”

The commission monitors matchups to make sure they’re balanced. It regularly orders neurological and other exams. And it suspends fighters after repeated knockdowns.

Foster, a former amateur boxer and professional mixed martial arts combatant, says: “Fighting is part of human nature. People compete. Fighting has been around since 4000 B.C.

“It would be disingenuous to say you can’t have any more fights. They would just go underground. Then they’re not going to be regulated.”

Boxing won’t be banned any time soon. But you can hear the bell tolling.

http://www.latimes.com/politics/la-pol- ... story.html

[paddy no 11]

There's some nonsense in there, sole purpose is to watch someone get battered into unconsciousness - really you couldn't watch it in the hope of seeing a skilled contest between two great boxers

[rowan]

There's some nonsense in there, sole purpose is to watch someone get battered into unconsciousness - really you couldn't watch it in the hope of seeing a skilled contest between two great boxers

As much as you might enjoy the skill and courage of the matador . . .

[paddy no 11]

Err no, the bull is not there of his own free will which is can't of what makes your argument a nonsense as previously pointed out. Not that it matters after that but the bull has been seriously wounded prior to the fight to ensure he doesn't win