PBRNow.com
Part Two: Chris Shivers

PUEBLO, Colo. (December 15, 2009) - At the PBR World Finals, there’s a corridor leading from the arena to the locker rooms.

It’s not just any hallway. It’s the Hall of Champions. A mural of past gold buckle winners lines either side.

Last October, Justin McBride was standing there when the interview turned to speculation about the greatest among greats.

He didn’t know it, but he was leaning against an oversized photo of Chris Shivers from 2003. McBride, a two-time winner himself, didn’t pause or hesitate before emphatically stating, “Chris Shivers is the best—”

“I’ve never seen anyone more exciting to watch (or) look better on a bull,” McBride continued, “and he could just beat you, hands down, on a two-point-less bull—because he’s that good.”

Today’s part two of a celebration of greatness is a look at the third greatest bull rider whose accomplishments came in the PBR.

As voted on by 10 legends – Ty Murray, Cody Lambert, Jim Sharp, Jerome Robinson, Michael Gaffney, Jerome Davis, David Fournier, J.W. Hart, Cody Snyder and Cody Custer – Shivers, who appeared on six of 10 ballots, finished third among the six riders who received votes based on ranking the Top 3 of all time.

Before going with Shivers in the third spot on his ballot, Fournier said, “Boy, that’s tough one. I’m going to have to reminisce a little bit.”

In the end, there was little doubt about what separated the two-time World Champion (2000 and 2003) from the others: it’s virtually impossible to bring up 90-point rides without Shivers dominating the conversation.

In fact, Lambert agreed with McBride’s assessment of Shivers on a lesser bull, adding, “He’s ridden the rank ones, he’s ridden the flashy ones, he’s ridden the easy ones and (did) it with a style that got the maximum amount of points out of every bull.”

Through the first 12 years of his career, 24 percent of his 341 career rides were for 90 points or more. That means one in nearly every four times he’s made the 8-second whistle – 82 times, to be exact – he’s scored 90-plus-points, including five that are for 95 points or better.

Shivers not only had a hand in the highest score in PBR history – a 96.5-point mark first accomplished by Bubba Dunn in 1999 – but he’s accomplished it twice in his career.

The first of those came in January of 2000 at an event in Tampa, Fla., when he rode Jim Jam. He did it again the following year in Las Vegas during the World Finals when he rode Dillinger to earn the Lane Frost/Brent Thurman Award for the highest marked ride of the Finals— the second time in three years he had done so.

Furthermore, in the first half of his career he won two world titles, never finished lower than ninth in the world standings and was actually in the Top 4 in five of those six seasons.

“When he was on his game and when he was winning World Championships,” Murray said, “I don’t think anybody ever looked better.”

Looking back, it’s hard to imagine that Shivers as a shy and soft-spoken kid from Louisiana.

He’s always enjoyed being at home with his family during the week – he’s married to Kylie, and has two sons, Christopher Brand and Parker – and riding on the weekends.

He was the PBR’s first millionaire, and the first cowboy to earn $3 million in prize money. It should also be noted that he also claimed two Challenger titles (1997 and 2000).

He’s appeared on nationally televised sports shows (“The Best Damn Sports Show”), news programs (“The Today Show”) and entertainment broadcasts (“Last Call with Carson Daly”) with the same relative ease.

And aside from bull riding publications and daily newspapers, he’s been written about everywhere from Newsweek and Esquire to Rolling Stone.

He’s been to 269 Built Ford Tough Series events, and won  18 since 2000.

“It’s going to have to be Chris Shivers,” said Fournier, who eventually gave him the edge based on “longevity.”

If there was a knock against Shivers it would be that some of his most frustrating performances have come during the Finals, for which he’s qualified every year since his 1998 debut. However, even in the past four years, which are widely considered to be the waning years of his career, he’s never left Vegas with less than $100,000.

“We’re seeing the tail end of Chris Shivers right now,” mentioned McBride, that day in October, while standing in a hallway honoring some of the greatest riders to have ever ridden in the PBR’s history.

“In his prime he was awesome, and it was something really fun to watch.”

As Murray pointed out, “his meter is still running,”  and Shivers is a shoo-in to one day be inducted into the Ring of Honor—just don’t expect him to stop spurring for at least a couple more seasons.

—by Keith Ryan Cartwright , PBRNow.com

PBRNow.com
Part One: The legends speak

PUEBLO, Colo. (December 14, 2009) - The PBR was formed in the midst of what some call the golden age of professional bull riding.

No longer were the sport and its many stars relegated to competing at dusty makeshift rodeo grounds. Instead they were headlining modern-day sports arenas.

Because of the PBR, they weren’t merely part of the show—they were the show, and from coast to coast they quickly emerged as the biggest show in town.

Nearly two decades later, the PBR is the only show worth watching when it comes to professional bull riding The Built Ford Tough Series continues to be the ultimate destination for the best riders and the rankest bulls in the world. And the PBR offers more prize money than any other western-themed sports organization.

Early on, names like Ty Murray and Jim Sharp were emblazoned across marquees, before giving way to the likes of Troy Dunn and Chris Shivers. Then it was Adriano Moraes and Justin McBride, and in recent years it’s been Guilherme Marchi and Kody Lostroh.

Of course, there were others—lots of others.

Tuff Hedeman and Cody Lambert. Ted Nuce and Owen Washburn. Michael Gaffney and Mike Lee. Ednei Caminhas, Jerome Davis, Aaron Semas, Clint Branger, David Fournier and Ronnie Kitchens.

And the list goes on.

Some of them won World Championships, and others were, as Sharp noted, “bull riding son-of-a-guns.”

But of all those greats, who were the greatest?

There are several ways of asking this question, but to start with, over the past week www.pbr.com polled 10 legendary riders – Murray, Lambert, Gaffney, Sharp, Davis and Fournier along with Jerome Robinson, Cody Snyder, J.W. Hart and Cody Custer to find the answer.

The single caveat to keep from having a 10-way-tie was that those who voted were asked to rank the Top 3 riders whose career accomplishments came in the PBR and as a result of the PBR’s existence.

“It makes me sick to think I left Troy Dunn off that list,” said Murray, who labored over ranking his Top 3, “but he’s my fourth—boy, that’s tough.”

“To answer these questions like this gives me a belly ache to leave out Ty, Tuff and Troy Dunn,” Lambert said, “because they all (three) do have serious PBR credits, but what makes them the all-time greats happened before and in the beginning of the PBR.”

Each first-place vote was assigned a value of three points, followed by two for second and one for third, meaning the maximum number of points any one rider could earn was 50. After the calls were made, the points were totaled up and double checked. The greatest bull rider in PBR history had earned 21 points, at least these according to these 10 men.

“Limiting it to accomplishments in the PBR makes is really hard,” Lambert said, “and I’m trying to be fair to the question.”

Over the course of the rest of this five-part, weeklong series, the Top 3 riders will be profiled in reverse order, along with a look at some others who might enter the conversation in another five to 10 years from now.

In the meantime, here is a sampling of some of what those polled had to say with regard to some of the names that came up.

Jerome Davis: It was while Davis was going to college in Odessa, Texas, that Custer saw the North Carolina native compete for the first time. “I knew he was going to be somebody,” said Custer, who won a PRCA title in ’92, the same year Davis traveled with him as a rookie. Hart, who also traveled with Davis, added, “He was very weirdly good—just an unorthodox style.”

Troy Dunn: “He’d fly over here, get off the plane, drive straight over to the bull riding, kick everybody’s [rear] and then fly right back to Australia,” Murray recalled. “He’d fly all day, step off the plane and beat [you] with jet lag.” What made Dunn tough to eliminate from Murray’s list was the fact that he won the Finals event in 1995 and again 1997 – the only man to do so twice – and then won a PBR world title in 1998. 

Michael Gaffney: Born on the Fourth of July, Gaffney was born to be an American hero. As Snyder said, “There were a few years there where he was as good as any them.” Consider this: The “them” that Snyder is speaks of are the greats from the golden age of bull riding—early on Gaffney rode against Hedeman, Sharp, Murray, Dunn and the others. He may smile a lot and always have a kind word to offer, but given his military-family upbringing and considering his fellow competitors, the 1997 champion is one of the toughest men ever to climb into a bucking chute.

Tuff Hedeman: Longtime traveling partner Cody Lambert called attention to the fact that upon the formation of the PBR, Hedeman, already a three-time PRCA champion, sat out an entire year with what could have been a career-ending neck injury only to come back and win a PBR world title in 1995. Sharp concurred, adding, “That’s all you need to know right there. He was a bull riding son-of-a-gun.”

Justin McBride: According to J.W. Hart, you have to take into consideration that by retiring in his prime, McBride “left at least one world title and three more million dollars on the table.” McBride won two titles and more money than any other rider in history. But it was that kind of success in the PBR that afforded McBride the opportunity to retire at the age of 29. “That was our vision,” Davis added.

Adriano Moraes: “He’s like six months younger than I am, and he won his third world title in 2006,” said Gaffney, who added, “This after I’m sitting on the back of the chutes in, probably, 2000 and he came up and told me, ‘I’m done. I can’t ride.’” A year later, Moraes won the second of his record-setting three world titles.

Ty Murray: “He was another bull riding son-of-a-gun,” Sharp emphatically stated. How so? Jerome Robinson, an 11-time NFR qualifier, who has been working with the PBR since its founding, said that Murray’s 1999 performance in Las Vegas is “the greatest Finals ever.” When reminded that Mauney recently became the first man to eight-for-eight, Robinson didn’t waver. “It’s not even close.” For the record, four of Murray’s five scores were in the 90s and involved matchups with the likes of Little Yellow Jacket (90.5), Panhandle Slim (94) and Red Wolf (95.5).

Ted Nuce: A 1996 inductee into the Ring of Honor, Nuce qualified for the NFR a record 14 times, and as Cody Lambert pointed out, “He was Rookie of the Year in 1980.” A year older than Lambert, Nuce was “at the end of his career” when he won the 1994 PBR World Finals event title. “When we started the PBR it was about the very best bull riders in the world,” Lambert added, “and it still is.”

Jim Sharp: “From about 1986, ’87, until ’92, there wasn’t anybody who could touch Jim Sharp,” Murray said, “that I’ve ever seen.” Murray went on to say that if Sharp rode out those seven years today, “he would be the richest guy to ever throw his leg over an animal.”

Chris Shivers: Davis remembers seeing an 18-year-old Shivers for the first time, at a bull riding event in Uvalde, Texas. Later that night, when he met up with J.W. Hart at a motel in San Antonio, he said, “I think I just saw the next PBR World Champion.” It took a lot for Davis to say that, but Shivers was as good anyone he had ever seen. Just a few years later, Shivers won the first of his two world titles.

—by Keith Ryan Cartwright, PBRNow.com

PBRNow.com
PBR stock contractors are their own special breed

OSHKOSH, Wisc. (December 8, 2009) - Frequently, three names come up when conversations turn to PBR stock contractors—Chad Berger, H.D. Page and Jeff Robinson.

But the 100 or more bulls at any given Built Ford Tough Series event represent ranches from the Eastern Seaboard all the way to the West Coast.  The PBR employs the talent, know-how, and bulls of hundreds of savvy cattlemen (and women) across the country.

In a series of articles, the PBR presents some of the stories of these often unsung heroes. Livestock Director Cody Lambert has shared his thoughts and opinions.

“All of these guys we’re talking about are the guys we can count on,” Lambert said. “The guys know they’re either going to get bucked off or they’re going to win something.

“These are guys we call.”

Brad Boyd and Toby Floyd (Boyd and Floyd): They bring a lot to the table. Brad has the business experience and is a self-made wealthy man, who is in the scrap iron business in Stephenville, Texas, and he’s bought a ranch. He’s been interested in bucking bulls for some time, and Toby Floyd has been bucking bulls for several years and raising a few, so they got together. Brad finances the operation and he’s a hands-on owner. They have some good bulls, and if they see one that’s great, they’ll buy him, and they have a pretty good breeding program. They own Black Pearl, who was the No. 1 bull in the ABBI Classics, and he was in the short go at the PBR Finals, and they’ve got Spit Fire. They’ve got those, and they have Hot Pistol, and I can always count on them for a dozen to a whole truckload of Built Ford Tough quality bulls.

Mike Cory: All the way down the West Coast he brings them to me, and I can always count on him for a truckload of bulls and some short go bulls. He’s got a young star named Seven of Hearts that’s really looking good, but he’s also had some really good bulls over the last 10 years. North Star is still a really good one. He had Ace of Hearts, and then he had a bull that he bought out in Las Vegas that really jumps in the air. His name is Rocket. Instead of having a bunch of little spinners, he has some bulls that really get up in the air and have some strength to them.

Jerry Nelson (Frontier Rodeo): When he started bucking bulls, he came to the PBR first and then he went on and started a rodeo company. Now he’s into bucking horse breeding and has some of the best bucking horses, but he’s still raising about 300 or 400 bucking calves every year and he’s got a lot of good bulls. He’s had the World Champion Bull Big Bucks. He’s had bulls like Scene of the Crash, Just a Dream and all the way back to Knock’em Out John and Tough Enough. He’s had great bulls every single year all the way up to right now, when he’s got California Dreaming and Sam’s Town and other up-and-coming young bulls.

Don Kish: He’s probably been breeding bulls for 25 years now and he’s raised some great ones. Back in the late 80s he raised a bull that went on in the 90s to a superstar, Wolfman. He was one of the flashiest bulls to watch, and one the fastest spinning bulls ever. He still has those bloodlines. He had a bull in the late 80s – Red Rock – the bull that Lane Frost was the only guy to ever ride. That was the foundation of Kish’s breeding program. He also took Mr. T from Wyoming – because has he was getting old and the winters were getting tough he talked them into sending the bull out to the West Coast, so he could live out the rest of his life in Red Bluff, Calif., where it was a little warmer. He bred that bull, with Cash being the most famous one. He raised Red Wolf and he raised Sky King, the father of Apollo, and Code Blue’s father as well.

Tom Teague: Tom Teague came on years ago as an investor in the PBR when we were trying to buy our television rights, and we didn’t have the over $6 million that we needed to do it. Tom came in as a 50/50 partner on the television rights. He was interested in the sport and he liked the guys. He bought half interest in Mossy Oak Mudslinger and he also bought half interest in Little Yellow Jacket. He had ranches that he used primarily for hunting and raising registered cattle, and then he decided he would start raising some bucking bulls, so he bought Bone Collector and bred him to some Don Kish cows that he had bought and he raised the World Champion Bull Bones. He also owns Uncle Buck and Deja Blu, and lots of other good ones. He’s an asset to the PBR and he’s only been raising bulls for seven or eight years now, but he’s already raised a World Champion.

Circle T Ranch: They’re down in Louisiana and I can really count on them for a small truckload or a large trailer load of bulls – 12 to 14 head of bulls – and they bring them in and they’re good ones. They raise some bulls down there, but they buy anything that looks good to them. Their top bull – I don’t know if they raised him or bought him – is Cajun Blast, but a bull they bought that’s been really good is Frosty. They had about six bulls at the PBR World Finals for the first year that they brought bulls to the Finals.

David Simpson (Diamond S Bucking Bulls): They’re out of Weatherford, Texas, and they’ve got outstanding bulls. They retired Avalanche, one of the great bulls we’ve seen in the last five or six years, at the PBR World Finals. They’ve got a lot of other ones that have been great. The young bulls they have that are really looking great are Big Iron, Mission Accomplished, Foolish Pride, Yosemite Sam. He also has a really good bull named Velvet Elvis. They’ve done a really good job, and have a pen of bulls the bull riders really like to get on. Scott Pickens works for David taking care of the bulls.

Cody Hebert: He was born in Louisiana and moved to Oklahoma when he was young, and for him and his dad, it’s just something that they like to do together, and they’ve been doing it for about 10 or 12 years now. The first bull they raised was Shane. He just retired this past year, and he was a good one all the way through. He was one that didn’t get rode much and went to the PBR World Finals five times. If you didn’t make any mistakes you could win on him, but not very many guys rode him. They have a young bull that bucked at the PBR World Finals as a Classic bull, but I also bucked him in the short go. He’s a bull called Red Bone that looks like he’s going to be one of the stars of the future.

Tino Martinez: Tino’s a really nice man and this is a great success story. Twenty-five or 30 years ago he came to the United States from Mexico and worked washing dishes in a restaurant. The cook got sick that Tino started cooking, and the man that owned the restaurant really appreciated Tino’s work ethic and kept him on for years. When he started getting old he made it to where Tino could buy the restaurant, and Tino did so well with that one location that now he has about four or five of them in the Dallas/Ft. Worth metroplex. He has a ranch outside of Dallas and another one in Mexico, and he’s really made something for himself. I’ve known Tino and his son Edward for about four years now. They bring some really good bulls, and they have a bull named Far West that we really enjoy having. When they ride him, they’re about 90 on him, and they don’t ride him all the time. Wrapped with Envy is one of their young bulls. It’s been great to have them, and when we’ve made the trips down to Chihuahua, Tino and Edward brought bulls and they both served as interpreters.

Chuck Griffith (Lufkin Ranch): Chuck and Patty have been at it for six or seven years, that I know of, and maybe longer than that. I’ve known them for six years because that’s how many times their star bull Zorro has been to the PBR World Finals. This was his final trip and he retired out there this year, and he was bucking the same way as some of his calves like Derringer and Maverick. They’ve got a lot of good young ones coming on, but Zorro is definitely the cornerstone of their breeding program.

Cotton Rosser (Flying U Rodeo Co.): The Flying U Rodeo Company has been around since, oh, the Fifties. Cotton started the rodeo company then, and he was a great all-around cowboy but he was hurt in like a farming, posthole digging, ranching accident. He was injured and couldn’t ride broncs anymore, so he started Flying U Rodeo Company, and has been very, very successful with it. He’s owned World Champion bucking horses – some of the greatest of all time, like High Tide and Buckskin Velvet. He’s just had a lot of great horses over the years and a lot of great bulls. The most famous bull that they owned over the last few years has been Reindeer Dippin’, and they have some of his offspring now. Reindeer’s retired, but they’ve got some of his calves bucking. They’ve got some special ones. They have a bull right now, Hawaiian Ivory, that was actually born and raised in Hawaii and shipped over here after he was already a good bucking bull in Hawaii. Years ago, I guess, Cotton sent some stock over to Hawaii and put on a rodeo, and this calf would be a descendent of the bulls that he left over there years ago. He bucked at the PBR Finals this year and he’s a big bucking son-of-a-gun.

Gilbert Carrillo (4 C’s): He’s one of the guys who was there when we started the PBR. He was a Champion bull rider in his own right, and decided he wanted to be in the raising and the training of bucking bulls, so that’s what he does these days. He’s got a great facility and quite a few clients, and he brings me some good bulls. The bulls you see in the short go like Tahonta’s Shadow and Carrillo Cartel—that’s the kind of bulls we’re looking for, and that’s the kind of bulls Gilbert brings.

Chad Pennington (No. 10 Bucking Bulls): He’s heavily involved in the breeding and the raising of the bulls, but he’s also a professional football player and a fulltime quarterback for the Miami Dolphins, so he has to have somebody oversee his bucking bull herd. He has J.W. Hart do that. J.W. and his dad Randy Hart bring the bulls to Built Ford Tough Series events and Challenger events. The best bull they’ve had so far has been Cat Man Do. J.W. raised that bull years ago and sold him to Chad back when Cody King was taking care of Chad’s bulls. They’ve got a few other young ones, but Cat Man Do has been the marquee bull of that company.

Kevin Loudamy: He was partners with Freddy Cordell on some bulls 10, 12 years ago and they still partnered every once in awhile, but we lost Freddy five or six years ago. Kevin has done his own thing, but they bred a lot alike and they traveled to events together. Kevin’s remained in the PBR and has been a really good stock contractor. He lost Uncle Charlie, that was a real superstar, about two years ago, and he’s partners with Lufkin Ranch on Derringer. He’s got a few young bulls that are up-and-comers that look like they can be good ones. Fire Plug was the best bull that he had the PBR Finals.

Harlan Robertson (Silverado Rodeo Co.): It was originally owned by Byron Walker, and he sold the rodeo company and the name to Harlan Robertson. Harlan had been hauling bulls to events for several years and had a lot of good ones and still does. He mostly goes to the PRCA Rodeos, but he gets to three or four Built Ford Tough Series events a year, and he was hauling Apollo for Ken King. Bob has been a good one, Spotlight has been a very good one, Black Gold … and I can count on him for about 10 or 12 bulls.

Nick Wagner and Jimmy Walton (WW Bucking Bulls): I had never heard of either one of them, and they called me one night and they were telling me about a bull they had that they wanted to bring to the PBR that they didn’t think anybody was going to ride. They told me nobody would ride Code Blue and they haven’t ridden him yet. I still think they’re going to someday, but they haven’t done it yet. They’ve been buying a few other bulls. They have one, Carolina Cat, that made the trip out to Las Vegas and hopefully they’ll add to their program, because that Code Blue dominated this year and it was a year that was as tough to win World Champion Bull as I’ve ever seen.  He left no doubt that he was the best one going.

Julio Moreno: He ropes the bulls for us at all the West Coast events and he doesn’t have that many bulls, but he has some quality. His best bull now is a young bull called Bushwhacker that looks like a superstar, and most of these other guys that we’ve talked about have tried to buy this bull off of Julio. He looks really special and he’s the son of Reindeer. The best bull he’s ever had has been Troubadour, and he’s still getting the job done too.

—by Keith Ryan Cartwright, PBRNow.com