Hello Mr. LaFond,

I'm Bruno. You may remember me from my comments on your analysis on the The Deadliest Warriors Episodes.

I'm writing to you because I want to show you something.

It's a poem, recited in the traditional manner of my people. I was listening to it somedays ago while training and it remimed me of you. The wole theme of the poem is about someone who was born to fight, fought through his whole life and, even in the end of his life, will not give up fighthing.

I tried to translate that poem to English, but I think I failed to really capture the spirit of the text. Anyway, here's the translation:

Valiant fighthing cock

Rustic man dressed in feathers

When you drag the Chileans [1]

In the drum of a cockpit

On your warrior momentum

I see a gaucho [2] advancing

Bloody Fighting,

On the heat of the battle!

Because just like you fight

Face to Face, naked chest.

Also fought the old ones

On the conquest of this land...

And like you, without passion

In silence, iron to iron

They fell without crying

With spear firm in their hands!

I evoke in this blood of yours

That sprouts, red and wild

Splashing on the sawdust

From your bare chest

The rustic man on open field

With the poncho [3] made in rags

While scratched the shortcuts

of our uncertian destiny!

God gave you, like he gave to the gaucho

That never bends the plume

This male pride

That you bear when you're already a chick

And the difference I feel

Is that the rustic man, for good or for bad!

Only fight for ideals

And you fight for instintic!

And that is why in a fight

I suffer together with you,

When I see you almost dead.

Dragging yourself, broken and blind,

Like someone who says: "I do not surrender

I'm a rooster, I die and I don't scream.

Fulfilling the dammed fate

That from the eggshell I carry!"

And when I see you die while fighthing

in your cruel fate

Without giving or asking for quarter

Rude feathered gaucho.

A little bit sad, ashamed,

A thousand times I asked myself.

Why I haven't made an effort

To die at your side?

Because in the fight on the life

A tie was enought for me!

Because I arrived at the end

Beaten, without beak and crooked.

And I only have the comfort

Like you,fighthing cock,

If someone tries to bend my spine

It must be after my death!

[1] - Here, the author is reffering to the spurs used by the gauchos, and comparing

then with the rooster's heel. The slang "chileans" came form the fact that, at

the peak of the gaucho history (the 19th century) the best spurs in South America

were made in Chile.

[2] - According to Wikipedia, "Gaucho is a word with several meanings. According to the Royal Spanish Academy's authoritative Dictionary, in its historical sense a gaucho was "a mestizo who, in the 18th and 19th centuries, inhabited Argentina, Uruguay and Rio Grande do Sul in Brazil, was a migratory horseman, and adept in cattle work." In Argentina and Uruguay today a gaucho is, according to the same source, simply "A country person, experienced in traditional livestock farming." In Portuguese the word gaúcho (note the accent) means "An inhabitant of the plains of Rio Grande do Sul or the pampas of Argentina, descended from European man and [Amer]Indian woman who devotes himself to lassoing and raising cattle and horses." and in Brazil gaúcho has also acquired a metonymic signification, meaning anyone, even an urban dweller, who is a citizen of the State of Rio Grande do Sul. In its purest sense, gaucho referred to the nomadic, often outlaw inhabitants of the great plains of Argentina, Uruguay and Brazil. In current usage, gaucho usually designates the rural working class in general."

[3] - A poncho is a kind of garment typical of the indigenous people of Latin America, similar to a mantle.

I hope you like it, sir. Keep on the great work!

-Bruno

Galo de Rinha - Jayme Caetano Braun