Strike of Hooves: A Barbarian's Form of Gambling
A crowd yells and cheers as they watch through the ring set in the middle of a wide, and open field. Two combatants with their flared-up nostrils, start to bite, and kick as the colour of blood, blazingly red starts to pour down from both stallions. After some time, a victor is declared champion and the crowd cheers even louder as the loser stallion falls to the ground, in pain and suffering. Such is the sad and gruesome truth of this barbaric sport and form of gambling - Horse Fighting.
To many people, Horse Fighting cannot be described as anything else but barbarism. It has a manner that is very cruel and inhumane. Why would people want to watch this and view it as a form of entertainment? One would normally tend to expect more from the human race as such an activity is just appalling and heartless. Yet why does this form of gambling still exist in this modern day and age where people have supposedly evolved and slowly stepped away from their former barbaric ancestry?
A number of countries to this day, still stage horse fights and continuously defend it as part of their cultural tradition, saying that it has went on for hundreds of years. Many governments of such countries would resist attempts of banning it, and instead try to legitimize it as money and gambling are factors intertwined to make such barbarism have reason to exist.
In China, horse fighting has been present and has went on for about five hundred years. In their Xinhe festival, the Chinese people celebrate, and ask for blessings on their crops and stage horse fighting events for the spectators who mostly place a wager on which stallion would become the winner of the match.
This offshoot of gambling, though mostly outlawed throughout the world, still exists also in countries such as the Philippines, South Korea, and Indonesia. This brutal activity has become a spectacle in fiestas or events organized by the locals for purposes of having a day of gambling and entertainment in either city stadiums, or fields in the provinces. Usually, at the start of the competition, two stallions are taken into the ring, and a mare in-heat is then showed to them and afterwards, taken away. The stallions are then whipped into anger, gunshots are fired, and they begin to combat one another until one either runs away or is killed. Blood and gore are an essential part of the event. A sum of money is awarded to the people who have placed a wager on the winning horse.
Despite animal rights groups pressuring the governments to ban this barbaric gambling event, some government officials still try to protect it, reasoning out that it is a way of indigenous people to strengthen their cultural identity. For many, such reasoning is lame and very thin on the ground as there are many other more acceptable ways for people to strengthen their cultural identity, and it is wrong to justify such a cruel and inhuman treatment of any living being for the purposes of gambling and entertainment of any culture.