well we eat them, i personally had ate some of these rooster when they die in the fight. but that was years ago.
most raiser of these cock fighters are sentimental that if their cock fighter won several times like a champ, they save its race and keep it alive even if its wounded severely. and then reproduce its race also.
they have their own community where they share the race of the chicken, they have their own market which these rosters are traded and traveled from island to island. they do have facebook groups for the raisers treating the animals as pets.
Cock fighting actually preserves rare and local breeds of chicken. In today's world, poultry farms prefer a few breeds that give good muscle growth in short amount of time. And this has led to extinction of several local breeds. But such poultry breeds are not suitable for cock fight. And for this purpose, the players preserve local sub-species. Without activities such as cock fighting, several local breeds would be extinct by now. Activists always look at one side of the picture. They fail to notice the benefits that indigenous activities such as cock fighting bring.