Matador gored to death in Spain. http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2016/07/10/spanish-bullfighter-gored/86915776/
IIRC a matador getting gored is not uncommon. Rarely fatal though. My high school band director said that when he was in the army he and a bunch of fellow soldiers went to a bullfight in Mexico. They started rooting for the bull at which point a group of Mexican soldiers ordered them out at gunpoint.
That was the plot on an episode of the 1970s Don Rickles NBC series CPO Sharkey, except the sailors were all thrown in jail.
I remember. That is why I brought it up to our band director and he told the story about he and his fellow soldiers cheering on the bull. They were actually warned once and then ordered out at gunpoint when they continued.
The best deal on beef tacos is about two hours after the bull fight. It takes that long for the butchers at the public market to do their job. They have the big hanging beef carcuses on hooks and there is a sign saying "fresh from today's bull fight" in both English and Spanish. For a small fee the butcher's wife cooks it up for you too right there in the market.
Agree it's a fucking barbaric activity! I can't cal it a sport. There are many ways to prove how bad ass you are (and entertain a crowd) that don't involve innocent animals. Killing an animal for sport that involves the animal having a nearly 100 percent chance of getting killed is bullshit (no pun intended). I hunt for sport - but my odds of success for hunting with a bow against actual wild animals (deer) are just barely above zero on any given day, and the ladies don't drop their panties if I am ever successful because I'm all alone out in the woods. And there's nothing brave or bad ass about any hunting to be honest, except hunting bears with a bow maybe. Bull fighting is just a ritualistic but incredibly cruel form of harvesting an animal.
But is rodeo much better? "Hey look buckaroos! I'm riding an animal that's having an anxiety attack!"
Reminds me of an old joke. A man goes into a restaurant in Madrid. The special of the day is the "Juevos del Toro," which the waiter explains are the bull's testicles from that day's bullfight. The man is intrigued so he order them. He gets two great big balls of meat and they're delicious! He goes in the next day and has the same thing: two huge tasty balls of meat. He goes in a third time and orders the same thing. This time the balls are much smaller, but he eats them anyway and they're quite delicious. When the waiter asks him how everything was. the man says "Fine, but the Juevos del Toro were much smaller today than they were in my previous two visits." "Senor," says the waiter, "the bull does not always lose."
Modern rodeos in the United States? Elite bulls are treated better than the cowboys. I remember famous bulls that would be given nothing but bottled water to drink. And any riding bull that deliberately hurts or kills a rider is retired (not killed, but no one is allowed to ride them again). Now bullriding in Mexico is still definitely old school. You still see cowboys get severely injured and killed not infrequently. It isn't unusual to see a bull down there run off and scape a cowboy along the corral fence for a good long ways.
Hmmm . . . and it was just recently that a bunch of lions bagged themselves some poachers. Something may be up.
