Blood Sport in Pittsburgh: An Analysis of Prize Fighting and Cock Fighting in an American Industrial City

The liquid movements of a fighter in training and the self conscious strutting of a barn yard rooster may not appear to be laden with cultural meaning at first glance. To the modern viewer they may seem to be totally unrelated, separate entities, fitness activity verses food. And yet this was not always the case. For at the turn of the end of the nineteenth century and the dawn of the twentieth century the United States underwent a number of dramatic changes. Cities grew rapidly due to their status as industrial centers. Middle class values struggled to retain their dominance in communities altered by industrialization and immigration. Men wrestled with definitions of masculinity that demanded that males be aggressive, passionate, and competitive in order to fulfill their role as providers within their families and compete in an industrial world.