QUEZON CITY, Philippines — In the center ring where Muhammad Ali and Joe Frazier pummeled each other during the "Thrilla in Manila" more than three decades ago, another world-championship blood fest was in full swing.

The deftest moves and deepest cuts drew shouts of "Fight back!" and "Peck! Peck!" from spectators hanging on every move. Most had fists of cash wagered on the outcome.

One after another, the fights raged into the night. Several were over in seconds. None lasted longer than 10 minutes. Most losers ended up dead on the ring's dirt floor. Many winners were barely breathing as their handlers carried them off.

Welcome to the 2007 World Slasher Cup II, where the really lethal roosters are separated from the mere chickens.

Billed as the world's biggest cockfighting event, the derby's $55,500 purse and prestigious title in May drew foreign entries from Japan, Germany and the United States.

For three nights, hundreds of game fowl competing on eight-cock teams with names such as "God of War," "Air Assault," "Deep Impact" and "Your Future" clashed in bouts at Araneta Coliseum.

In flapping blurs of feathers, grit and blood, the roosters pecked and gashed each other with 3-inch razors strapped to their legs.

It is big-ticket entertainment, a high-stakes slaughter that animal-rights activists call barbaric. But in the raucous crowd of several thousand, cockers wondered what was wrong with fighting chickens when humans beating each other senseless in boxing rings were worthy of million-dollar purses and Olympic medals.

Millionaire developer Jorge Araneta, the coliseum's owner and a dean of Philippine cockfighting, was ringside at the "Thrilla in Manila" in 1975.

"This is a better proxy than human beings beating each other's brains out," Araneta said.

Cockfighting is so central to Philippine culture that Rolando Blanco, vice president of the country's Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, has little hope of persuading the government to stop it.

"How can we fight cockfighting when our lawmakers are cock fighters and breeders?" he asked.

ECONOMY BENEFITS

Supporters of a ban acknowledge that fighting cocks' killer instinct is encoded in their genes, but argue that nature is more forgiving than cockfight organizers, who arm the roosters with razors and make sure they can't escape the ring. But chickens don't win much sympathy in the Philippines. "Our laws protecting animals mainly concern endangered species and bigger animals, like dogs, cats, horses, whale sharks and monkey-eating eagles," Blanco said.

Filipinos were fighting cocks before Portuguese explorer Ferdinand Magellan came ashore in 1521. This year, more than 5 million roosters will clash in the country's cockpits, said Manny Berbano, publisher of Pit Games magazine and head of the National Gamefowl Training Center.

With six national TV shows devoted to the sport, Filipinos can enjoy the carnage from their homes almost every night of the week.

The Philippine economy benefits by more than $1 billion a year from cockfight betting, breeding farms and the business of selling feed and drugs, including steroids, that bulk up the birds for two years before their fighting instinct kicks in, Berbano estimated.

At the coliseum, bet-takers — called "kristos" after the Tagalog word for Christ — probably handled more than $400,000 in wagers in a single night during the Slasher Cup II, he said.

Berbano is a cockfight evangelist with a PowerPoint pitch. He quotes Abraham Lincoln in defense of the sport.

"As long as the Almighty permitted intelligent men, created in his image and likeness, to fight in public and kill each other while the world looks on approvingly, it's not for me to deprive the chickens of the same privilege," Lincoln told Americans demanding a federal ban on cockfighting in the 19th century.

OPPONENTS RALLY

Opponents of the sport in the U.S. have kept up their campaign for a complete ban for more than a century, and now Louisiana is the last legal bastion of American cockfighting.

As cockpits across the U.S. closed, or went underground, American breeders continued to produce pedigreed game fowl, maintaining bloodlines that date to 19th-century England and Ireland. Some made millions of dollars exporting fighting cocks to the Philippines and Mexico, where the sport is legal and enormously popular. Berbano proudly paid an Alabama breeder $5,000 for a cock from a long line of champions, a thoroughbred Sweater Yellow Legged Hatch.

But a new law is expected to cut off multimillion-dollar exports of American game fowl. In May, President Bush signed legislation that makes it a felony to export or transport across state lines dogs and chickens used in fights. The penalty is up to three years in prison and a fine of up to $250,000.

The Humane Society of the United States says that will help prevent American breeders from exporting fighting animals and "puts increased pressure on the airlines to stop shipping roosters to cockfighting hot spots."

Johnnie Phillips of Atlanta was one of at least 17 Americans with roosters in the competition for this year's Slasher Cup. He learned cockfighting from his father while growing up on a farm in Alabama.

Phillips, 61, says he doesn't understand why governments would ban fighting cocks from doing what comes naturally, when, he says, they aren't much good for anything else — especially eating. "They get 3 months old, and they're like chewing leather," he said.

Some states are tougher on cockfighting, but it's only a misdemeanor offense in 16 states, mainly in the South and West.

Hawai'i laws address cockfighting by prohibiting animal cruelty and by outlawing the sharp metal gaffs attached to the legs of chickens during a fight. Both laws are misdemeanors.

FIGHT PREPARATIONS

In Araneta Coliseum, gaffers tied blades called "tari" to roosters' legs. The softer spurs they were born with were trimmed to nubs to make way for steel blades tempered to killer strength with titanium and cobalt alloys.

Sparring roosters, known as "heaters," pecked at the fighting cocks to get them riled.

In the final seconds before the starting buzzer, a male nurse swabbed the neck feathers of each rooster to test for dirty tricks, such as feathers laced with cyanide. Then the cocks' tari were unsheathed, and a cockpit technician wiped each blade with gauze soaked in rubbing alcohol.

The roosters were released from each side of two center lines. Some crowed. Others went straight for the kill, flapping above their opponents, wildly stabbing.

When the roosters lay panting in the dirt, the referee, or "sentenciador," picked both up and brought them to head-to-head, waiting for one to make the regulation two pecks needed for victory. In the few bouts in which neither rooster had the strength, or will, left for that, the sentenciador declared a draw. The bettors moaned.

At 4 a.m. on the final night, the World Slasher Cup finally was clinched, with a record of seven wins and one draw by the eighth rooster entered by Wilson Ong, a wealthy Philippine businessman.

The rooster died soon after twice pecking the limp, bleeding final challenger. Handler Alfred Pangilinan, 36, cradled the dead winner in his arms for the long trip home to Guagua, a town 50 miles north of Manila.

There, at the edge of the training farm, in a graveyard of cockfighting champions, Pangilinan dug a hole and buried the bird.