It is illegal, now, but historically, blood sports were very popular. By definition, blood sports include activities that inflict serious injuries, pain, or death as the direct goal. At times called “butcherly sports,” these activities often pitted animals against animals, humans against animals, or human against other humans. Of course there are still sporting events that might seem like blood sports today. Hockey and boxing frequently spill blood, and many (most?) sports cause injuries. But there are rules to prevent injuries instead of encouraging injuries.
Bullfighting and dogfighting are blood sports, but cockfighting is probably the most well-known blood sport and still practiced in a few places outside the United States. Many might think of Rome and the gladiator contests staged in the coliseum when they think of blood sports. Animals such as bears, lions, rhinoceroses, and elephants (not sharks – sorry, Ridley Scott and Gladiator 2) were often pitted against each other or men that were usually slaves, criminals, or prisoners of war. The middle ages had jousting tournaments. Early modern Europe had dogfights and cockfights, as well as bearbaiting, where a bear was tortured, often pitted against another animal or group of animals, then slaughtered at the end, to the cheers of the onlookers. Maybe this is a bit of a reach, but public executions also seemed to be similar to a blood sport as large crowds gathered to watch criminals hanged or tortured. Elizabethan England had boxing and football, but also cudgel fighting – where two men are paid to be tied together with a short rope and bludgeon each other with cudgels until one ‘won.’
Sociologist Randall Collins explains violence and sport this way:
Sports are deliberately contrived for producing exciting and entertaining contests. What happens during a game is spontaneous and unpredictable in details. But the kinds of things that can happen are structured by procedures selected in advance….Sports are real life, and this makes them engrossing; but real life at its most deliberately and artificially organized and controlled. It is larger than life, conflict in its purified forms, better focused and therefore more dramatically satisfying than in ordinary events…. At the center of sports is its emotional appeal.
As a society, we’ve outlawed blood sports. But the appetite of 21st century people for the violence and real life nature of blood sports has not abated. Perhaps it is even heightened. Now it’s mainly virtual – through films, video games, television shows, or virtual reality.
On a day that commemorates the legacy and work of Martin Luther King, Jr. in civil rights, and the inauguration of the 47th president of the United States, I wonder about the role of violence and the engrossing nature of these contests. No one would say that politics is actually a blood sport, or that civil rights and activism is a blood sport, though certainly violence, injuries, and death can be the outcome. Organized, collective action to enact institutional change often involves conflict and violence, even in nonviolent movements. Politicians and parties ‘wage war’ against each other and while there are rules, there is also theater and entertainment, mixed with power and money. There are certainly winners and losers.
Perhaps it’s a different kind of sport for a 21st century audience.
Randall Collins, Violence: A Micro-sociological Theory, 2008
David Bailey, History of Sport class at Michigan State University
Bruce C. Daniels, “Blood Sports,” The Encyclopedia of Recreation and Leisure in America, vol. 1
Photo by Daniel Azevedo on Unsplash
