on May 14 published a report on Edwin Diaz and his alleged involvement with cockfighting in Puerto Rico, and the story named Jose Ortiz, Alexis Diaz and Irad Ortiz, Jr. as participants. The report put fresh attention on a practice that remains legal in Puerto Rico’s culture but illegal under federal law.
Josh Peter, writing for, said Edwin Diaz appeared in Facebook posts on Feb. 2 and Feb. 4 by Club Gallistico de Puerto Rico. The posts were advertisements for cockfighting tournaments and showed Diaz in his Dodgers uniform. One Feb. 2 post said the event would honor one of the club’s members in Major League Baseball and invited people to come to the coliseum, take a picture with Sugar and get his autograph. A Feb. 4 post called Diaz a Puerto Rican star and cockfighter and described the event as a tribute to him.
The coverage followed a March 10 story from El Nuevo Día that included a photo of Diaz standing in a cockfighting arena. That story said the Diaz family allegedly brought four roosters to fight. In the same account, Diaz was quoted saying it was a pastime he had followed since childhood, that it was legal in Puerto Rico and that otherwise he would not have been there.
Cockfighting has deep roots on the island. It was first officially recognized in 1770, banned after the U.S. invaded Puerto Rico in 1898, then declared an official sport in 1933. The federal ban that took effect in 2019 made cockfighting illegal in all U.S. states and territories, including Puerto Rico. Participants can face up to five years in prison and a fine, while spectators face up to one year in prison and a fine.
The clash between local tradition and federal law has long been unresolved. Club Gallistico de Puerto Rico filed a lawsuit against the federal government in 2019 challenging the ban, but it failed, and the U.S. Supreme Court declined to take the case in 2021. Even so, the club’s use of Diaz’s image and uniform in ads shows how the practice still reaches outward from the arena, and why a single report can land as both a sports story and a legal one.
