A friend of mine, Jimmy—his real name—who we talked about before, he was always into coming up with these easy money deals, stealing copper and such. He started raising pit bulls to fight. He was selling them and fighting them. We went to this one fight up on Shipley Avenue. A lot of people think it [dog fighting] is just a black thing, but Morell Park, Brooklyn Park—even Dundalk, has a lot of white guys who are into dog fighting. You have to remember that the dindus get off on being out in the open with their dirt—selling drugs, they let everybody know—that’s brilliant. The whites are a little more low-key with their dirt. Now, down in Morell Park it [dog fighting] is big and out in the open with those white trash idiots down there.

[The author suggests he will take copies of Big Ron’s biography to the bars in Southwest Baltimore and Ron responds, “That’s a good idea, probably the only way to get those fuckin’ idiots to read.”]

The big difference between blacks and whites in dog fights is that black guys will do cruel things to the dog that loses. but the white guys will sell it to somebody for a pet.

The first one I went to was down back off of Wilkens Avenue in Southwest Baltimore. I didn’t hang around long. Jimmy was fighting his dog, and it was a couple meatheads in the neighborhood who decided to put their dogs together and bet some money on it. Me personally, I always liked animals more than people—basically because they’re generally better than people from a moral standpoint—and if you wanna a fight, people should get in there and fight. I didn’t hang around long.

The one dog—the other guy’s dog—that dog would come in and grab the other dog’s leg, pull it down and immediately disengage and go for the other dog’s neck. Some breeds favor doing this. That was his strategy, and it was working well. The other dog would fight free, try to come back, and then the dog who was getting his leg drug down wanted to get out. He had no more game and wanted out. That was pretty much it, the other guy won the money. Jimmy lost his money.

The second one I went to was a lot more organized, up on Shipley Avenue, off of Baltimore Street. This was in a row home that was populated by a bunch of black junkies—a shooting gallery. They gave them junkies money to have this dog fight down in the basement. They had several fights, a lot of money involved, several people fighting their dogs. Jimmy had a female dog, and her name was Laylay. She was a vicious bitch, a female he was fighting against males. He took her up there. There was a dindu over there with his dog. They had wood, they made the ring out of, like it was made out of pallets, but it wasn’t. He put the dog he had in there.

They have the handler in there with the dog.

These dogs are amped. They hit them up with cocaine and amphetamines, feed them gunpowder to make them mean.

They have a chain on them.

There’s a referee. The referee has a stick.

I don’t remember him having gloves. It would have been a good idea, but he didn’t have them.

The handler’s got the dog collar with the left, stooped down. His right hand’s holding the dog’s hips to the ground. I saw several fights this night.

The referee gives the word.

They release them, and they go right for each other. Laylay got her jaws on this male dog’s throat and had the jaws locked.

The black dude pulled a gun out and was gonna shoot Laylay and Jimmy pulls his gun out and says, “If you shoot my dog, I’m gonna shoot you, niցցer.”

He hands me the gun; I’m standing there holding the gun, and he’s going to show them how to get Laylay off without the stick, without breaking her jaw, and I feel like an idiot. I figured worst comes to worst, I’ll kill everybody here and save the dogs.

He takes a bottle of Bacardi, soaks a towel with it, throws it over the dog’s face and the dog lets go. Instead of taking a stick and prying the jaws apart you hold the rum towel over his head. The other thing they do is take a lit cigarette and stick it on the dog’s asshole. The dog will let go. The stick ramming in the mouth is not how you do it.

Jimmy won his match, won his money, and went on, and other people were bringing their dogs down to fight. As soon as he got paid, I said, “We gotta go.”

As we get outside, I took the gun and used my shirt to wipe the prints off and gave it to him and said, “Here’s the gun. Let’s go. Don’t ask me to do this shit again.”

This guy broke into a box car on the railroad tracks and stole cases of Crown Royal and was selling them to bars all over Baltimore. 18 bottles to a case and they had a whole box car worth of it.

He would chain a cinder block around the dog’s neck and run them on the treadmill. A lot of guys will take cats and small animals and practice killing them. Some guys starve them, but you want them well fed, vitamins. A pit bull, to keep their masters happy, will keep running. They have an instinct to win and a gameness that is better than most dogs. These dogs were better than most people. But I never agreed with the dog fighting thing. If you wanna fight, be a man and fight. A dog should be sitting under a shade tree licking its balls.

They would feed them gunpowder by mixing it into their food. It eats the lining of their stomach away and puts them in constant pain, makes them mean. Jimmy didn’t like doing that—didn’t believe in it—but it’s something a lot of guys do.

That last dog fight I saw was on the corner of Hillen and 32nd street. These guys didn’t give a damn. When I was coming up, this was all secretive. They do it out in the open now. The cops obviously don’t care.