The Grammy award-winning band Matchbox Twenty caught a lot of flack recently for canceling a performance at a rodeo due to their concern for the mistreatment of animals. Cheynne, Wyoming puts on every year what it touts as the world’s biggest rodeo. The band was apparently unaware of what they were booked for. To their credit, when they found out, they canceled and explained to their fans via their website that, “It would be impossible for us to put ourselves in a position of making money from what we believe to be the mistreatment of animals.”

Good for them.

Clearly, the popularity of the so-called sport is waning and rodeos are finding themselves becoming increasingly irrelevant. The reason seems clear. They are an archaic and pointless form of entertainment. The Romans have long since passed and gone are the days when we glorified the battle between man and beast. In reality, this wouldn’t even qualify as it certainly doesn’t pit man against beast when man is armed to the teeth and beast is drugged and tortured.

If we want to see a true sport, let’s let the bull have its day. But that won’t happen. Management won’t allow its contestants to fight a bull or a bronco mano e mano or mano e hof. There are too many lawyers who would cry foul. As they should. But who fights for the bull?

I’d like to see more true tests of strength and courage. Let’s see what happens when we pit man against himself. That’s the toughest battle. Always has been. Seldom does the good man win. In the internal battle to do good it seems all too easy to choose cruelty over kindness.

Yet it is not right to do something just because you can. Just because animals can’t speak for themselves, does not mean we have a right to be cruel to them; to hurt them. We have to be able to see beyond our own selfish pleasure and ask is this right or good?

We need to stand up and be heard. We need to win the internal battle and rid the world of this nonsense. If we don’t all of humanity will pay the ultimate price.

Anthony Vultaggio is a speaker and the host of The Anthony Vultaggio Show. For more information about Anthony, visit www.AnthonyVultaggio.com or www.SetTheStageForSuccess.com.