By C.J. SULLIVAN & DAVE HOLLANDER

SULLIVAN: Now that New Mexico has made cockfighting illegal, the Desert State has now joined 49 others in America. The only province that still allows cockfighting is Louisiana and, well, they have always done things a little differently down there.

I would venture that most New Yorkers have not seen a cockfight. You’d have to know the back streets of the Bronx to find cellars where these battles are fought. Some Latino men are big on cockfighting, and they’re keeping it alive in New York.

But should it be legal? Anyone who’s downed a juicy chicken leg cannot moan that the sport is inhumane. At least these birds have a fighting chance. With Popeyes and Colonel Sanders, it’s a mass-produced genocide. My argument against making cockfighting legal is that it would become the next Willimasburgy thing to do, instead of being an illegal back-street gambling event as it currently is.

I think women’s rugby should be illegal. I think lacrosse should be banned and outlawed. Cockfighting? Again, if it’s legal, the only thing New York will do is mess up a good thing.

HOLLANDER: God forbid something as sacred as cockfighting falls into clammy hipster hands. Those poseurs wouldn’t have the stomachs for it anyway.

No, I’m thinking big here. New York should legalize cockfighting and ride the big money wave that other kooky fringe sports like Mixed Martial Arts, Bull Riding and Competitive Eating are now enjoying.

Can’t you see Perdue and Tyson in a bidding war for league sponsorship rights? You’ve already mentioned KFC and Popeyes. That’s right thinking. They, along with Church’s and Kennedy’s, would purchase stadium naming rights.
Shake ’n Bake could get into the act, sponsoring a team or individual fighters. Bruce Ratner, Dan Doctoroff and Mayor Bloomberg would salivate over the chance to build a new cockfighting arena in SoBro. Think of the badly needed jobs that project would provide, not to mention the urban revitalization to the blighted area and kickbacks to every politician involved.

The tantalizing broadcast synergies between the Animal Planet, ESPN and The Food Network would raise Roone Alredge from the dead.

There’s plenty of money to go around, C.J., and once the sport is regulated, they can create the structure and transparency that boxing currently lacks. You could classify fighters according to background, delineating an Organic Division, Free Range Division, Cage Free, Kosher and so on.

Here’s the best part: Cockfighting actually has the total worldwide appeal that the NBA, NFL and MLB only dream about. From Algeria to Bangkok, from Sao Paulo to the South Bronx: They’re cockfighting like crazy. It may be the one thing that Hugo Chavez and John McCain have in common. Cockfighting could unite the world.

SULLIVAN: I will do you one better than cockfighting. Why stop there? Why not get all Roman and have interspecies fights? Why settle just for chickens? Have you ever wondered who would win in a fight between a lion and a bear? Or better yet, a tiger and a lion? Like the question of who is tougher, the Hulk or Spider-Man, these things can keep you up late at night.

But cockfighting would be a good start. Get the American stomach used to some fowl battles, and we can move on to the bigger game. I could see a grizzly bear being hailed as the World’s Toughest Mammal. We could even bring Mike Tyson back to fight a lion. Tyson would do it. Tell me Pay Per View would not go wild if a fight between a lion and Mike Tyson were to be televised.

Then we could rent out the Brooklyn Aquarium and have a killer whale and a great white shark fight it out in one of the huge tanks. Ever since Jaws and Orca, I wondered who would prevail in that battle. My money would go with the killer whale, since the black and white skin looks good, and size in fighting does matter.

Animals could take over the wide world of sports, and we could have a whole new look to the sporting scene. And if enough people went to see cockfights, the term “chicken” for a coward would end. Those birds can battle.

HOLLANDER: You raise a good point. I’ve never been comfortable with the pejorative “chicken”—a vicious calumny that has damned an entire bird sub-phylum. It’s not fair. Where the hell is PETA on that one?

Perhaps we could learn something from cockfighting. In a recent Forbes.com interview, veteran cockfight organizer Jose Feijoo from Puerto Rico explained that “the cock is the only animal that fights its own kind … out of instinct.” I would argue that there is another animal, which from time immemorial has repeatedly demonstrated that same instinct: man.

Why not vicariously let the cock exorcise our demons? Have we not learned from our short stay on earth that we are but bloodthirsty creatures that will erect massive cultural institutions in the service of sport, art and religion only to distract us from our violent nature? There is good reason why cockfighting has endured as a centuries-old leisure sport in the Middle East, Europe, Latin America and Asia. Those two birds allow us some relief from the savage impulses that peck and claw at our fragile self-control. Ultimately, it is a civilizing sport.

Like other invalidated old laws that forbid our natural impulses—sodomy, miscegenation, flag-burning—the ban on cockfighting must be lifted.