When Morante de la Puebla hit the ground during last year's Feria de Otoño, I saw what many others did. As he recovered from a tough cogida, Morante's face revealed a man suddenly realising he was an old man in a young man's profession. At forty-five years old, the hits, cogidas, and cornadas hit harder and took longer to heal than they did ten years before.
Watching the spectacle before me, I realised it was the first time I had seen something die before me in person. This wasn't a movie, video game, or a thought experiment. Death was real in the ring.
