 Tarantino has said about Mandingo fighting , " I was always aware those things existed " , there is no definitive historical evidence that slave owners ever staged gladiator @-@ like fights to the death between male slaves like the fight depicted in the movie . Historian Edna Greene Medford notes that there are only undocumented rumors that such fights took place . David Blight , the director of Yale 's center for the study of slavery , said it was not a matter of moral or ethical reservations that prevented slave owners from pitting slaves against each other in combat , but rather economic self @-@ interest : slave owners would not have wanted to put their substantial financial investments at risk in gladiatorial battles . 
