The End of El Pana, One of Bullfighting's Oldest, Most Controversial Matadors

Rodolfo "El Pana" Rodriguez is seven feet above the ground. His body is folding in on itself like a sandbag, and is about to begin a merciless descent. He has been launched into this position by the horns of a bull, which moments before struck him in the solar plexus.

You could say the bull struck two people. One, a shy recovering alcoholic from Apizaco, Mexico, named Rodolfo Rodriguez. The other, El Pana, an outlandish matador who approached the ring in a horse-drawn carriage carrying loaves of bread for the crowd. In his prime, El Pana could fill the Plaza Mexico, the world's largest bullring.

Where Rodriguez ends and the character he created begins isn't always clear. Rodriguez often simplifies things by referring to himself and El Pana in the collective, as "we." He always planned to have El Pana killed in the bullring. Instead, on May 1, a bull paralyzed them both and sent them to the hospital.

El Pana was a throwback to the golden age of bullfighting in the 1940s. He smoked cigars, kept a flower in his lapel, and saluted the prostitutes who warmed his heart. "When I was starting out," he once said, "I heard that to be a bullfighter you had to be loafing, to smell of wine and women. That got driven into me. I've always had bohemian taste, for dances, for the sensual night life."

While most bullfighters retire in their mid-40s or early-50s, El Pana was still in the ring at age 64. He saw himself as bullfighting's last romantic. By his machista definition, he may have been right. Bullfighting is increasingly seen as a cruel tradition, not a romantic one. A majority of Mexicans, 73 percent, supported banning the practice in a 2013 poll, up from 57 percent two years before. In Spain, where El Pana also occasionally fought, only seven percent of Spaniards between ages 16 and 24 support bullfighting; between 2007 and 2014, the number of fights in the country fell by 59 percent.

Warning: This video is sort of brutal.

Rodriguez was born in 1952 in the small industrial city of Apizaco, two hours from Mexico City. His father, a policeman, was murdered when he was three months old. He worked as a Jello mold vendor, a raincoat salesman, and a gravedigger to help support his seven siblings. Eventually, he became a panadero, baking bread, and began fighting bulls on the side. His first cartel listed him as Rodolfo Rodriguez, Panaderito de Apizaco. Fans started calling him El Pana.

El Pana's career had a slow start: in his first ten years, he killed only ten bulls (top matadors, meanwhile, can kill more than 100 per year). He would sneak onto ranches, sleep in the stables, and wake up at dawn so that he could practice.

In 1978, still facing a lack of work, El Pana responded by going on a hunger strike. The publicity stunt worked and he had the defining year of his career. While still a novice, he sold out five performances at the Plaza Mexico in Mexico City. Fans were mesmerized by how he placed the banderillas, colorful spiked sticks that weaken the bull, in spots that seemed impossible. One of his specialties was turning his back to the charging bull then stabbing the banderillas from over his shoulder. "El Pana fights by exceptions. The rest fight by rules," Mexican writer Ignacio Solares said in a TV documentary.

A bullfighter is considered a novice until two matadors endorse him and present him with a sword and red cape as part of a ceremony called the alternativa. El Pana officially became a matador de toros in 1979, but this triumph was followed by a troubled second act. El Pana insulted other bullfighters, did stints in jail, and showed up too drunk to fight. (Alcoholism, he once said, was "the most difficult bull I've had to fight.") Bullfighting impresarios took revenge by assigning rough bulls that made generous contributions to his career tally of more than 20 gorings.

El Pana may have been a diva, but he was a conscientious one. In 1995, while French President Jacques Chirac was in the country on a state visit, the bullfighter protested the testing of nuclear weapons in French Polynesia by displaying a hand-painted sign in Plaza Mexico: "Chirac, cut it out already with your little bombs you bastard." He believed that the tests caused a mini-tsunami on Mexico's Pacific coast. His brashness got him banned from the world-famous bullfighting ring for over a decade.

Only in 2007, at age 54, was El Pana allowed to return to Plaza Mexico for what was supposed to be one last fight. He showed up in a pink matador suit with silver embroidery that matched his hair. He pulled off one daring pass after another, sending the announcers into fits of enthusiasm. At one point, he simply dropped the cape, turned his back to the live bull, and walked away with his arms raised in triumph. When the fight was over, rather than a traditional hand-waving promenade, he circled the plaza at a full sprint.

El Pana also took an unconventional approach to the customary dedication of the bull. After listing seven words for prostitute, he toasted "all the women who sated my hunger and quenched my thirst when 'El Pana' wasn't anybody, the ones that gave me protection and shelter in their breasts and in their thighs in my loneliest moments. God bless you for having loved so much." Asked afterward if he was a male chauvinist, El Pana rejected the label by saying that women have a place in the kitchen and the bedroom even if they don't belong in the bullring.

The sensational toast and retirement fight became fodder for articles, interviews, and a TV documentary. Even the President of Mexico called to congratulate him. All the attention inspired him, in the end, not to retire. El Pana hoped to finally get a fight at Las Ventas in Madrid, bullfighting's Carnegie Hall, but his dream never materialized. Instead, he was relegated to provincial rings around Mexico. In interviews, he ignored his declining fame and fixated on the legend of El Pana.

"People talk most about bullfighting after a bullfighter has died," he said in an interview with a Spanish bullfighting site. "I have always dreamed, I have always wanted the end of El Pana to be in a bullfight." But he also talked about running for elected office in Apizaco after he retired and said he was opposed to suicide.

On May 1, Rodriguez stepped in front of a scrum for a quick interview before a fight. The bullring was not a prestigious one by any measure. A reporter asked about his plans for retirement. He said he wasn't sure, but that "a bull might come out and hit El Pana and that might be the end of the magic and the legend of bullfighting."

Later that day, El Pana was doing passes with the larger cape used when a bull still has its strength and speed. These were routine moves, but on one the bull didn't bite. Its horns went straight into El Pana's chest. He was sent into a lifeless arc that left no time to flail. More than half his spinal cord was damaged and three neck vertebrae were fractured.

More than two weeks later, doctors at the Nuevo Hospital Civil de Guadalajara are still focused on keeping Rodriguez alive. The problem is his heart. He was saved from cardiac arrest on May 13 and continues to have small heart attacks. Francisco Preciado, the hospital director, told VICE Sports that Rodriguez's chances of surviving are very slim—almost 98 percent of people die from complications caused by the type of fracture he suffered. If he is lucky enough to leave the hospital, he will be a quadriplegic and need a ventilator.

"The will to live plays a fundamental role," Preciado said.

Rodriguez believed that El Pana's death would close the book on an era of bullfighting. In Apizaco, where he grew up, there are signs that it's already over.

When Rodriguez talked about running for local office, he mentioned the bullring and the street named "El Pana" as signs that he could win. But getting to El Pana Street was difficult because taxi drivers didn't know where it was. And the statue that stands in front of the ring, depicting El Pana and a charging bull, has seen better days. There are four empty drill holes where the plaque should be.