By Daniel Bergner. A small wooden table was carried out to the center of the ring. The table was painted bright red. The men would merely sit as though playing poker. The last man sitting would win one hundred dollars.
Participants sign a release absolving the prison of liability.
They're forbidden to practice and not given the protective vests that pros wear. Yet many enter. As for lifeblood, maybe the occasion was, in a sense, sacramental. The men offered up their bodies, and in return the public came to see them, acknowledged their existence. For the rest of the year, Angola was nowhere, isolated in its own corner of the state, the nearest tiny town 30 miles away.