The bowels of professional bull riding

And a microcosm of the American Dream?

Western Sports correspondent Will Gendron infiltrates Madison Square Garden for one of the year’s premier bull riding events.

Dawson Gleaves is the first rider of the day.

He is matched up with a bull named Rockville, who ranks 23rd in the world and shakes 88% of the people who attempt to ride him. Despite his 5 ’10 frame, Gleaves weighs 145 lbs and will be tasked with holding onto 1,600 lbs of autonomous muscle and sinew. If he can remain intact for eight seconds, he—and the animal underneath him—will receive a score out of 50.

In the moments leading up to a professional bull ride, both parties are gridlocked inside a steel pen, known as a bucking chute. About five or six members of their broader team or entourage help the rider secure rope around the chest of the bull between their knees. Riders are given a brief period to prepare themselves as they orient around the bull, before a 30 second timer begins. Failure to exit the chute into the arena before this period results in disqualification. A head nod will release the gate, ending a brief stretch of solitary confinement between man and bull.

When Gleaves gives the go ahead, his body is immediately shifted 180 degrees from its starting point by the bull. Rockville needs just two movements to terrorize him: a slight jump-turn counter-clockwise, before using this momentum to load up into the first buck. Rockville is almost vertical, his head inches from the dirt, and his back legs raised past the height of the chute. Gleaves manages to brace himself, leaning back to absorb the sheer force of a car-sized mass of muscle extending eight feet in the air. 

Like handling a hydro-planing vehicle, Gleaves overcorrects to avoid getting launched, but Rockville’s second buck is at half-strength. Gleaves is now leaning too far forward. It’s a minor error but enough for Rockville. Using the second buck to throw off the 22-year-old’s balance, Rockville explodes into a third buck, matching the force of the first. More than half of Gleaves body is now dipped. Facing downwards and with no way to recover, he enters survival mode, gripping onto the bull from the side. Gleaves is flung to the ground with the sixth buck. About five seconds have elapsed.

It is the first day of the Professional Bull Riders’ (PBR) flagship competition The Unleash the Beast Tour on its New York City leg.

Over the weekend, riders will accumulate points based on their performance, moving up and down a leaderboard that is constantly in flux, with the culmination of the tour determining a world ranking. Bulls, like their human counterparts, are also ranked accordingly.

To summon greatness at the highest level in any sport, athletes must do so through the prism of pain. A performance that will sear itself into memory is extracted through a body that will contort, extend, and explode through space in ways that should be impossible. The most violent sport in the country, where this pain is immediately recognizable even to a first-time viewer, is not football. It’s bull riding. The mark of a high-level rider isn’t limited to technical ability. It’s whether or not, after being mangled by an unstoppable force at a young age, there is still a willingness and even exuberance to be ragdoll’d again and again. 

At 8:00 A.M on Friday morning in Madison Square Garden, PBR production members are in the middle of rodeo conversion, which is running three and a half hours behind schedule, allowing media members to study how the sausage is made.

Two pieces of construction machinery wizz back and forth across the MSG floor, spreading, flattening, and pulverizing 1.5 million pounds of dirt bussed in from New Jersey over the George Washington Bridge. Hours before, it was the site of a Rangers hockey game, and even hours before that it was the site of a basketball game between the New York Knicks and the Chicago Bulls. From hardwood to ice to dirt. 

Reporters from WNY1 and Good Day New York are the only other people present. Everyone seemed to get the memo, sporting cowboy hats, boots, and bolo ties.

Amidst the preparation, rider John Crimber, 18, sticks out like a sore thumb. He’s by far the youngest person in the arena, stands about 5’7, and exudes a calm, unbothered air. A Brazilian-American cowboy by way of Decatur, Texas, he’s at the arena early because the PBR is pushing him as one of the faces of their league. And for good reason. He’s polite, has a babyface, and is bull riding royalty. 

His father, Paulo Crimber, was a PBR champion and participated in the organization’s inaugural tournament, the Bud Light Cup series, among other competitions during the league’s early days. There’s pressure for John to live up to certain standards, and while this weight can induce some nerves, “I use it to my advantage,” he tells me. 

The pageantry and spectacle of these events seems blase to him. His outfit is fairly minimal; he’s got on the same chain that his father wore when he was his age. He says he eats whatever as well—burgers and hot dogs, it doesn’t matter—and gets hyped for these moments by listening to a playlist of Drake, Kodak and YoungBoy.

“Youngboy is fire man,” he says, as he plays “Step on Shit” off his phone speaker.

His nonchalance belies a harsh reality of his sport: Like most riders of his caliber, Crimber has dealt with a near-death experience.

“I broke my face actually, back in May,” he starts, recalling the moment how one might give directions. “My eye socket. A bull’s horn hit me in the face, went through my helmet, and hit me in the eye. Had to get plates, screws, and stitches everywhere.”

He pulls up video evidence of the fall and the audio from the horn’s impact sounds like a granite balloon popping. 

“I don’t remember laying there. They took my helmet off, I was kinda on my knees, put my hand out, and there was blood dripping and I couldn’t open my eyes. I was like, Damn it, I’m blind.”

Later in the afternoon, I run into John’s dad, Paulo Crimber.

To give you a brief rundown of the elder Crimber’s PBR career: He first qualified for the PBR World Finals when he was 18, and then nine times after that, finishing third in 2004, despite competing with a broken hand. 

Hailing from Olímpia, a town five hours outside of Sao Paulo of 55,000 people, Crimber maintains the biggest pipeline between young, Brazilian talent and the American machine. He does all of this at his home and ranch property in Decatur, where he houses and trains Brazilian riders seeking to enter the big league, driving them to and from surgery and rehab, while providing translation assistance. Somewhere between 50 and 60 Brazilian riders have since settled down in the area. 

“Guys come in, I pick them up and host them at the house for a month or two while I help them find a place,” he says. “The reason I moved [to Decatur] is that it’s outside the city but not too far from the airport.”

“You guys [Americans] are more private,” he continues. “Brazilians like to group up, and if you don’t know someone you still give them a hug, invite them in, and feed them.”

Brazilians have dominated the PBR for as long as the organization has existed. Adriano Morães, a Brazilian rider, won the inaugural PBR world finals in 1994, while 14 of the 31 total championships have gone to Brazilians. Cassio Diaz, a 22-year-old from São Francisco de Sales is the number one rider in the world right now and the most recent PBR world champion.

“In Brazil, though, people are humble and work hard. They don’t have too much money. So they work hard at their job to get as good as possible so they can have more money,” Silvano Alves, a three-time world champion, told Texas Highways in 2021.

“They’re determined to be the best. Then they can come to the United States and make a better life for themselves and their families.”

Part of PBR’s appeal is in the way it props up America as a beacon of unlimited opportunity. 

A prize purse that has increased tenfold since its inception goes hand-in-hand with this idea, and is reflected through anyone who has come into contact and then absorbed by it. Riders are outlaws, perpetually hunting for the next bounty, which saddles into PBR’s manifest destiny marketing. Contracted mercenaries exploring not just westward, but the entire country, in search of the perfect ride.

Chase Outlaw sticks out among a sea of cowboys at the media event.

He has a perfectly square jaw, a large head given his compact frame, dirty blonde hair that reaches past the back of his neck, and a form-fitting, black button-up matching a black, felt cowboy hat. His shirt is crisper than the rest and the bright, highlighter yellows and greens of his sponsors—Can-Am, Wrangler, and Monster—evoke a decorated general rather than a bull rider.

Above all else, the tectonic plates of his face bend and break at irregular angles. Hunks of metal lodged under the surface of his skin bridge the gap between bones that were once deformed beyond repair. 

In 2018, Outlaw broke 30 bones in his face, including his nose and both eye sockets, requiring 68 screws and 11 plates to restore order. He’s had four reconstructive surgeries on his shoulder, as well as knee, hip, and groin surgeries.

“They can smell fear,” he says of his bovine assailants, while nursing a whiskey. “If you’re nervous on the back of their back? They know.”

“But if you get on there with dominance and show authority? They can sense that too.”

Entering MSG from the ground level for a bull riding event emphasizes the hazard involved. Surrounding the competition area is a network of black steel bars, collectively weighing 50,000 lbs. The people who are this close to the action are mostly career photographers looking for gnarly shots of man vs beast and associates of the riders themselves, capturing the action for highlight reels. Those in attendance that were here solely for the spectacle were housed dozens of feet above the battleground. 

Suddenly the lights go down and a laser show of bright green, blue, and purple spills over the playing field. Massive screens on each side of the competition area provide real-time information and statistics on each ride. They’re suspended above black chutes that contain the next four bulls on deck. Riders pace, stretch and cheer each other on atop these chutes.

“They say if you can make it here, you can make it anywhere,” booms the narrator for PBR’s New York-focused teaser video, soundtracked by a pitched-down version of Frank Sinatra’s “New York, New York.” The narration touches on the bull riding lore that intersects with MSG. A rider named Pistol Robinson broke both of his legs in this very space back in 2012, for example. 

Throughout this heavy-handed intro, men in full ranch garb pour gasoline all over the dirt. The video ends, lights cut to black and a radio-voice with a southern twang emerges like an auctioneer version of the Wizard of OZ.

“Are you ready,” it says, drawing out each word, before frantically screaming: “To UNLEASH THE BEAST!” 

An explosion that sounds like the demolition of a 30-story building goes off, immediately followed by fire emerging from every orifice of what’s now a rodeo space. Six-foot walls of green flame emerge from black boxes placed in front of the chutes on either end of the arena floor. “Back in Black” drowns out any other audible noises. Everything happens in quick succession, so that the viewer is hardly able to take in any one aspect of the show, instead stimulated by a rolodex of primal symbolism.

The MC directs attention towards the chute area where small doorways are lodged between the bull housing gates. Two riders emerge and walk the length of the dirt floor as flames rage around them, before arranging themselves in a circle around a pedestal in the center of the floor. This ritual repeats itself until the 50 or so riders that will participate in the New York leg of the Unleash the Beast tour are all standing on the floor, facing towards the crowd.

There’s something gladiatorial to it all. Each rider receives an introduction stripped down to the bare essentials:  Name, place of origin, physical measurements, and recent accomplishments.

Emotionally, a PBR event is constantly teetering, while disseminating American imagery in bite-sized morsels.

Shortly after flames emerge from the floor, there is a moment of silence for the US military and first-responders. When the broadcast cuts to crowd antics, and a nine-year-old boy gets asked what he loves about bull riding, his mom can be seen sobbing. At least one police officer or firefighter in attendance gets recognized each day of competition after the crowd is encouraged to drink beer out of their shoes.

Aside from rider and bull, the most prominent people on the rodeo floor during rides are three men outfitted with long-sleeve mesh jerseys emblazoned with the US Border Patrol logo. They are known as “rodeo protective athletes” and distract the bulls after a rider dismounts or is thrown off.

Watching the trio in action can feel like taking in a scene from a whimsical adventure movie: Heroes, introduced to us by their full names, who must corral a frantic and dangerous animal back into its rigid confinement so that everyone can remain safe. They juke, spin, and “heh-ya,” around the bucking bull to do so. It’s good, clean family fun.

And what sticks out is not so much their noticeable degree of lateral quickness, or their outfits which strike a cross between geriatric hooper and baseball umpire, but the lettering at the center of their backs and chests, striking a parallel between what the organization they represent does: Funneling people back to where they came. 

For as impressive as the riders are, nothing compares to the bulls. In the PBR there is no delineation between human and animal. Navigating to the organization’s website will allow users to search for both individual riders and bulls, providing a comprehensive index of scores, world ranking, and a general statistical performance overview. Merchandise for bulls will often outsell that of riders. 

Outside the 31st Street side of MSG, Dominic and Addison, a father-daughter duo, gushed earlier about the hoofed athletes:

“The Undertaker!!” Addison exclaimed, referencing a bull that would participate in the weekend’s activities, and despite his relative obscurity (ranked #133 in the world at the time of this writing) bucks off 87% of the people who attempt to ride him. 

“I love Top Dollar… He’s like a God damn puppy,” Dominic says about his favorite bull. “He bucks like the best of them but you can go up and pet him. If you YouTube him you’ll see he’s not an aggressive bull.”

“He’s a very nice bull,” Addison adds.

 

Later in the day I see the Undertaker in action when Dalton Kasel, a top-ranked rider by way of Muleshoe, Texas, tames him in an early ride of the night. During this viewing it becomes apparent that the bulls have a gameplan too. In the beginning of the ride Undertaker gets to his spot about 15 feet out from the chute area in a single bound, before giving three bucks as he completes a single rotation in-place. Kasel is ready for them all, matching the bull’s movements. Gassed and demoralized, the Undertaker’s final bucks in the back-half of the ride are half-hearted, knowing that Kasel took his best punch.

Man beats bull. But it is far more common to see the opposite play out, especially during initial rounds of a PBR event, before lesser riders are eliminated as the competition moves into its latter stages. And it is almost a guarantee that even the best riders will get tossed violently to the ground at some point. Completing a ride during every day of an Unleash the Beast event vaults the rider into rarefied territory, an accomplishment that only the greats have achieved.

Exuding the same unbothered demeanor in the chute as he did ahead earlier in the morning, Crimber puts on a show.

He uses his off hand like a whip, snapping it with each turn of the maelstrom he is tied to. His technical ability is apparent—there is no moment where the bull’s movement catches him off-guard, even if it shakes his position or forces him to adjust his hips. He moves when the bull moves, instead of trying to predict where it’s going to go. 

At the 7.8 second mark he is ejected from his seat. For the first time all night, it seems like the powers that be got it wrong.  But then, what looks like a baggie of cocaine wrapped up in a small balloon is tossed onto the dirt. There is a flag on the play. 

After about seven minutes deliberating over the exact start time — measured by the moment a bull crosses the imaginary plane between gate and arena  — and whether or not the clock began a millisecond late, it was decided that there was an error. Crimber earns himself a score for the day.

The ride has been embedded in my brain, partly because it achieved what only the best rides are able to do — stretch time, making a matter of seconds feel like an hour-long saga — but also, because it emphasized the margin separating a recorded result from the infinite ledger of athletic ephemera.

Part of what makes PBR’s Unleash the Beast tour so electric is that it induces short-term memory loss. There are too many moving parts vying for your attention for you to have a detailed recollection. The pacing can feel almost like parody. 50 rides crammed into two hours, a highly-skilled entertainer that continuously engages the crowd, advertisements that manifest physically, like when several fans are brought down to floor-level to ride in a Can-Am utility vehicle. Segments honor the broader worlds of law enforcement, a pyrotechnic light show forever in the periphery. For at least a minute leading up to the moment, the in-arena announcer gives a backstory to both rider and animal, like they are two characters in a Pynchon novel. When the rider isn’t able to get into a favorable position, another 15 seconds may elapse before any action takes place.

For every completed ride, many more are ripped apart in under a second. The majesty of a bucking bull is not diminished when a rider is able to remain astride for eight seconds, but when a rider is sent skyborne, piledrived into the ground, or slammed against the arena enclosement, they look like an amateur. When the wrecks are particularly gruesome, they are casualties of war. No one is immune either.

As an organization, the PBR gets little to no coverage from outside outlets.

Documentation of each year’s Unleash the Beast Tour is almost entirely self-generated. When I step into the press room, the only other two journalists are over 50—a slightly larger man wearing a black suit and tie in the style of a more disheveled John Wick, and his female compatriot who gives off an air of sophistication. They are French and it is unclear what publication they work for or even how they found themselves at this event. The man asks all the questions, while the woman holds a camera uncomfortably close to the scene.

“Do you think the weather affects the bull’s behavior? The cold might activate something in their brains,” he says, silencing an already quiet room. 

Conner Halverson, a young Nebraskan who was the winner of day one, takes a couple seconds to think about it before offering a response.

“Nah, I don’t really think so. I think they act generally the same.”

In that moment, it seemed like the adrenaline-fueled high of Halverson’s night had come to an abrupt halt. Here he was, one of the best bull riders on earth, in a room that was indistinguishable from a BINGO night, being subject to interrogation by people who knew next to nothing about his craft.

Halverson is someone your grandparents would call a polite young man. He looks like Zac Efron’s character in Iron Claw, equipped with straw-like hair and a huge square face. He has a midwestern drawl that is emphasized by a pace of speaking that moves at half-speed. He had just ridden UTZ BesTex Smokestack, a terrifying bull that froths at the mouth and has its eyes wide open while competing, to the tune of 90 points.

Monk-like and devoid of emotion, he tells me there’s nothing that goes through his head when he’s on top of a bull, and no rituals or playlist beforehand. 

“The only thing I make sure I do before I get on is pray.”

About half of the media members from the day prior are absent in the MSG waiting room on day two of the tour. 

We await Kacie, the head of corporate communications for the PBR. She is always busy, shepherding riders to and from interviews, and answering a non-stop stream of inquiry from her phone. After introducing me to Richard Long, PBR’s in-arena DJ and music supervisor who seems wistful for a bygone era of monoculture (I once heard him mash-up MIA’s “Paper Planes with Kodak Black’s “Like Dat,”) she disappears back into a matrix of hallways.

Almost as soon as we are done talking, Kacie appears, as if conjured, to lead me to a hallway where Paulo Crimber awaits.

What separates Crimber from other bull riding legends is an overwhelming sense of tranquility. He wears a couple more layers of clothing than everyone else. There isn’t a freneticism to his movements, which he brings to a complete standstill in conversation. He gives you all of his attention. These qualities stick out when compared to someone like Chase Outlaw, who gives you the sense that some part of his brain is elsewhere, like he’s chasing something perpetually elusive. Crimber’s career is over but there is nothing he’s trying to fill. 

When I ask him what he thought about his son’s ride from the day before, he makes it clear that for every bullride, completed or not, there are a range of interpretations. No ride is going to be seen in the same way. 

“That bull kind of broke the plane with his butt and the judge should’ve started the clock then… when they stopped at 7.80, I knew [the ride] was longer than eight seconds,” he tells me, an observation he was only able to make by watching John from a distance, rather than remaining by his side on the chute.

In the early days of PBR, the company’s most visible partnerships were booze related.

Its inaugural tour was the Bud Light Cup Series, which kicked off in 1994 and was exclusively telecast on The Nashville Network (TNN), fitting into the network’s existing slate of outdoor and motorsport programming. TNN would eventually become Spike TV, and when Crimber was riding, protective vests were not yet introduced, eventually becoming mandatory as the 90s progressed. 

In 2013, protective helmets became mandatory, but only for competitors who were born on October 15, 1994, or later. It was commonplace to watch riders storm out of the gate in nothing but a plaid button-up, leather chaps, and a cowboy hat. 

“You could call it more raw, just being the athletes and the bulls,” Crimber comments on the PBR of old. “But I think I’d rather ride right now then go back to when I was riding.”

In the decades since, PBR was able to attract more sponsors, with its premier series changing hands from Bud Light to Ford. The organization was acquired by Endeavor in 2014, which also owns a majority stake in the UFC and WWE. After broadcasting stints with NBC, ESPN, and FOX, CBS emerged as the PBR’s primary channel in 2013. Prize money has accordingly skyrocketed with around $330,000 being doled out to competitors in 1994, to around $3.13 million just for the Unleash The Beast World Finals. 

The injection of capital into something pure and hollowing it out isn’t new. But rider winnings are as much a fixture of the PBR as the bulls. Prize money is omnipresent. In-arena announcers will find some way to remind everyone that $100,000 is on the line. Aside from competition statistics, the PBR compiles how much money each rider has earned in individual events for the current year, as well as their career earnings. 

“The first time I knew I wanted to be a bull rider, I was watching a rodeo in my hometown and when I saw this guy riding a bull, I dreamt of being on that bull myself,” Crimber Sr. tells me. “I was living in this little neighborhood until I was 15. I had one pair of jeans and I came to the United States without knowing English. I took the risk and I’m glad I did. It’s the greatest country in the world.”

Not everyone can be Paulo Crimber, but it does help to learn under his tutelage.

“I really didn’t want John to be a bull rider because of the danger. But since he was a baby, everything he could sit on — a dog, couch, whatever — he would turn into bull riding,” Crimber tells me when I ask about how his son fell into the sport. 

“I knew he was going to be a bull rider when he was three years old watching me ride. You could just see his eyes get sparkly watching. And when you see something like that, that’s true love. It’s just like seeing a person and falling in love for the first time… When he was six, he got on his first one and as soon as it hit the ground, he got that same look while watching. Then I knew he was in for real, and there was nothing I could do to get him away from it.”

Subsequent days of an Unleash The Beast event play out like a bender.

Participating in the competition, even as a viewer, induces a physiological high. Shortness of breath, a tightness in the chest, and tingling sensations that stretch from forearm to fingers and kneecap to toes. 

The PBR doesn’t leave anything up for interpretation. Everything about its competition is foot to gas. 

The pre-ride introduction costs $700 a minute to run, and despite playing out in the same fashion each day, it never gets old. Once again, the lights are dimmed and a cacophony of laser lights crisscross the entirety of the MSG dirt floor in a Fibonacci sequence. Instead of a color palette reminiscent of Picasso’s blue period, day two is entirely red. Gasoline is poured all over the floor and even though I’m aware of it’s coming, the same explosion that carries the weight of a small bomb damages my hearing. We are back in hell. 

The first section of rides on day two continue the madness. A whopping six rides are completed out of a possible eight, with four occurring consecutively.

Out of those initial rides, Connor Halverson takes on Wilson, a bull that had been 20-0 up until that point and handles a rotation of bucks without teetering or moving outside his center of gravity. At the very end, the bull breaks out of rotation, to dash back towards the chute, while mixing in kicks to his left and right. Halverson is almost caught off guard by the sudden deviation, and begins to slip to his right. 

Catching a breaking point during a ride is like watching a fighter take a big hook to the chin that damages them. You can almost see the alarm bells go off in their head as they find their body in a nonsensical position. In Halverson’s case, his foot remained on top of Wilson, but the rest of his body was flat against the bull’s side, almost like he was dangling off a cliff. Luckily the eight seconds had elapsed and the subsequent motion from Wilson, cleanly threw him off and away from the vortex of horns and hoofs. 

Right after Halverson, Vitor Losnake, a 20-year-old Brazilian who is the smallest athlete in the association at 5’2’ and 117 lbs, is up next. He puts up the highest score of the night, taming a bull named The Maverick. The ride is defined by verticality. At multiple junctures, The Maverick’s hind legs extend past the height of the metal arena enclosure. There is one moment where Losnake gets moved off his center, but as The Maverick continues rotating, he uses this momentum, throwing himself in the opposite direction, which brings his position back to equilibrium. An adjustment in real time that is purely instinctual.

Day two hits a lag midway through the competition where all nine of the athletes in section four are unable to complete a ride. Everything about the PBR’s product commands attention, eliminating any opportunity for reflection, so a prolonged period of monotony can feel like a post-stimulant crash. 

To combat this fallout, the non-riding antics are turned up. The rodeo entertainer returns with a vengeance, as if a production manager, recognizing a potential lull in activity, took him back to a locker room and gave him 30 mg of Vyvanse. 

He materializes in the stands near a group of men who are pounding Modelos and prompts them to start chanting Olé Olé. After that, he snakes along the lower section rails and leads an arena-wide singalong of the “Fresh Prince of Bel-Air” theme song. He caps it off by catching marshmallows in his mouth, while on the arena floor, with someone hurling them from 75 feet out in the 100 section rows. This final feat is sublime. 

While exaggerated and over-the-top, the entertainer’s antics are necessary to balance some of the darker elements of PBR. Around this same midday period, everyone is subjected to a segment meant to recognize the valor of the US Border Patrol.

At the end of August last year, a Brazilian man named Danelo Cavalcante escaped from prison in Chester County, Pennsylvania, as he awaited transfer to another state prison, to serve a life sentence for killing his ex-girlfriend in 2021. Following a two-week manhunt, Cavalcant was subdued by Yoda, a 4-year-old Belgian Malinois, that tore into his scalp before latching onto his thigh, as two dozen border patrol officers arrived at the scene. 

The in-arena announcer delivered this story as uplifting string music accompanied his words, recognizing the bravery of the K9. Imagery from the manhunt — the officers posed with the injured Cavalcant, who is lying face down in the southeastern Pennsylvania brush, blood leaking from his head, like they have just won a national championship — was beamed onto every screen in the arena, including the jumbotron. The ensuing applause matched the fervor of the best rides from the day. 

It is chilling to see what looks like a dead body given dedicated screen time in MSG. But not surprising. Bull riding brushes closer to death than any other organized sport in the world.

Multiple bull riders have died in the middle of sanctioned competition, most notably Lane Frost, a 25-year-old who, after completing a ride on a bull named Takin’ Care of Business, was struck in the back, while still on the ground, following his dismount. He stood up, before crumpling back down, and died on the arena floor due to internal injury. This incident became known as “The Last Ride” and took place in 1989 at the Cheyenne Frontier Days rodeo. 

Across the digital archives of bull riding competitions on YouTube, the most viewed videos are WRECKS, which as the title suggests, highlights moments where riders are obliterated by the 1600 lb animals they are attempting to dominate. The titles are outlandish and lessen the severity of what has happened.

“Marco Eguchi Knocked Out After 94-point Ride on Spotted Demon”

“Jess Lockwod Suffers Broken Collarbone in Collision with Wild Goose”

“Derek Kolbaba Tears ACL & MCL Following 89-Point Ride on Bottom’s Up”

“Sean Willingham Breaks Tibia and Fibula”

“Chase Outlaw Gets Thrown Like a FRISBEE by Night Sweats”

To be a fan of any sport, is to accept a degree of violence. But with bull riding this violence lends itself to an overarching concept of sacrifice that is constantly thrown around from the way law enforcement and broader arms of American militarization are celebrated to the riders themselves, who are putting their bodies on the line for greatness. 

Experiencing tragedy, even as a third-party observer, reaffirms the belief that triumph emerges in its wake. To see Chase Outlaw break his face–almost beyond repair–sets the stage for his ultimate comeback. There is catharsis in the carnage.

 

Exiting the arena is a factory reset. Connor Halverson is walking some 30 feet ahead of me with a friend. They have been wearing the same cowboy gear for 10 hours, and now it finally sticks out. A mass of people are walking in all directions near the Seventh Avenue exit, and the duo becomes part of it, no one recognizing or batting an eye at the leader of the Unleash The Beast NYC standings through two days. 

By day three it becomes clear that the bulls are more emotionally expressive than any other participant in the ceremony. While waiting in the chute pens, nerves are palpable. Short, heavy breaths shake the animal’s neck and lower jowls. When it’s almost time to ride, a general rippling sets in, giving off the impression that the bull is vibrating.

Man Hater, as his name would suggest, is a bull that does not get ridden.

People try, like Boudreux Campbell during the championship round of the third and final day of the weekend’s competition, but he is twisted and discarded in 3.2 seconds. It is surgical rather than violent. 

Man Hater’s vertical lift is a straight line. There is nothing riders can do but brace themselves for gravity’s effect. Campbell manages to hold on during the first two bucks, where Man Hater isn’t just vertically upright, but also three to four feet off the ground. When Man Hater lands, the impact loosens up Campbell’s position, forcing him to lean too far forward. The second time this happens, he is spun out of his grip.

Earlier that day I spoke with Mike Miller, a stock contractor, someone who breeds, trains, and takes care of the bulls used in sanctioned competition. He grew up on a ranch in Oklahoma and attended college on a bull riding scholarship, before his professional career was derailed by injury. 

“I had a bull flip over on top of me. His rear over his head and shoved my leg up past my head and broke the shaft right off my hip,” he tells me.

“I have pins and plates to hold it back together.”  

Bull riders do not graciously retire, they are forced to call it quits. And yet Miller maintains that the world of bull development is not so different from other sports.  

“Bulls are like athletes. Every stock contractor is looking for the Michael Jordan of the bull world. You can’t train him, you can help him along. Either a bull bucks or he doesn’t, you’re not gonna make him buck,” he says.

“You’re looking for that one kid at the basketball camp that sticks out a little more than anybody else and you try to hone his skills in. You tell him to settle down and worry more about getting a good shot than just trying to drive in there every time.” 

Later, the conversation moves towards the unspoken channels of communication between bull and man. If bull riding isn’t so different from other sports, the clear separator would be that half of the participants are unable to speak. 

“I don’t know if there’s a channel of communication but every bull is just like a person, they have their own personality… There are bulls where you can definitely tell they like what they’re doing. When you catch bulls at home and you’re loading, going up the alleyway and some of them kind of hate going up the alleyway to get in the truck,” he explains. 

“And then you let one out of the pen and he runs all the way to the truck, gets on the trailer, turns around, and waits for you to shut the gate. You know that bull likes it. He’s ready to go.”

Human riders aren’t the only people who celebrate after delivering a highlight, bulls will let the arena know how they feel after a good performance too. Silvano Alves attempts to ride Tulsa Time, during the penultimate ride of day two. He is bucked off, after putting up a good fight, but Tulsa Time’s off-beat jumping rhythm becomes his undoing. Rather than retreat back to the bull pens though, Tulsa Time takes a victory lap around the arena, giving little leaps after every other bound. 

“It’s no different than walking out for a championship game. I think they get a little butterflies, they know it’s game time,” Miller says when I point out that some of the bulls are visibly anxious in the pens, ahead of a ride. 

“They’re living and breathing animals, they’re not calm and collected, all the time.” 

Throughout the weekend media members are given the opportunity to stand on the chutes, to take in the action from the same perspective as the riders. The vantage point is like stepping into another world. 

Competitors who have already ridden or have some time before they are on deck, lean against the back railings, observing their peers and offering whistles of encouragement. Others are locking in, and stare out in the distance, towards nothing in particular. 

John Crimber, who has yet to ride, is stoic and while he doesn’t seem scared, there is a nerviness to his demeanor. As fellow riders pass by and make conversation with him, he smiles but only offers single-word responses with an accompanying head nod. He takes 10 minutes to lace up his cowboy boots. 

Portuguese is the primary language heard. After that, the sounds from the bulls themselves stick out. Short, hurried breaths, and the clearing of sinuses. Some of the sounds, like black leather vests and chaps creasing and the friction created from rope being slid through gloves, tightening around a bull’s torso, would not register if heard out of context. But knowing what they precede, imbues them with a dramatic weight. 

Cody Jesus, a 25-year-old from Arizona is nearly perfect as he attempts to ride a bull named Tucker during the midpoint of day three. At the seven second mark, Jesus’s center of gravity is shifted, so that his hips are angled towards his right. He is thrown off during the next buck in Tucker’s rotation. As long as a rider keeps their hips straight, like they’re seated on a non-descript piece of furniture, they will complete a ride. When this is interrupted, it almost always results in a failure to score or worse. Bulls are too unforgiving to recover from a miscalculation in positioning, no matter how brief. The PBR is a game of margins. 

Later on, the biggest wreck of the weekend takes place as a rider gets flipped over the top of the bull he was riding and lands on his back, still near the animal’s path of travel. Instead of retreating back to its pen, the bull continues charging forward and digs its horns at the fallen rider, making contact and plowing him further into the ground.

A solemness falls over the arena reminiscent of the 2009 Bud Light Invitational in San Antonio, when Matt Bohon got bucked off by the two second mark, but was unable to get out of his bull rope and was dragged by Spitfire for nearly a full rotation before the bull’s hind legs made impact with his upper back, knocking him unconscious. The broadcast audio picks up the sound of Bohon’s snoring, who appears as though he’s in REM sleep, for nearly half a minute. 

“I’ll tell you what, it’s a rough sport,” says one of the in-arena commentators who sounds like Larry the Cable Guy.

“I hate to say there’s a good side to this, but with some injuries it’s best to be unconscious for them. Just for the simple fact that you don’t realize what happened. You’re not trying to move. You’re not trying to get up. You’re not trying to uh, fight the doctors.” 

But the show must go on and just as quickly as a hush can envelope an entire arena, the pendulum swings back in the other direction almost as fast. 

Minutes after we all witnessed someone get gored, Austin Richardson dominates a bull in a way that I have yet to see. During the penultimate ride of the competition, he rides Moonlight Party, handling everything that’s thrown his way — midway through the ride, Moonlight Party has taken Richardson about 30 feet away from the chute area — to the point where the bull freezes in place, standing on his hind legs, with its front legs protruding out into the air.

With this ride, Richardson managed to amass the highest aggregate score of the weekend, winning the event. On the dirt, the champion tells me he listens to 2017 Youngboy tracks like “Untouchable” and “Dedicated” before competitions. Regarding the ride itself: “How that bull kind of stopped there at the end, that was a sketchy jump,” he says with a laugh.

After Richardson is announced as the winner of the event and various media personnel complete their interviews with the 24-year-old, by way of Dallas, Texas, I remain in the arena until it’s empty, parsing through half-baked thoughts regarding the past 72 hours and what it all means. 

PBR reflects fragments of beauty that emerge from severe and unrelenting pressure. These events can be used as a launchpad to explore ideas from labor relations to determinism to immigration. Is there anything more American than taking what originated as a Mexican past-time, erecting an infrastructure around it through pillars of commerce, before trying to draw as many eyeballs to the ensuing product? 

“You can learn a lot of techniques and we talk about a lot of stuff, but at the end of the day it’s so simple,” Paulo Crimber told me a day earlier.

“It’s just you and the bull and four movements: Forward, backwards and side to side.”