MILWAUKEE – From March 9-10, Fiserv Forum will shift its focus from basketball to bull riding. The Professional Bull Riders‘ Unleash The Beast tour will bring the country’s best riders to Milwaukee, and among them is 18-year-old John Crimber, who started riding bulls at age 5.
Crimber, a Texas native, told Wisconsin’s Weekend Morning News he watched his father ride bulls and was hooked from the first time he tried it for himself. “I remember when I got my first new pair of chaps. I showed up to the bull ride and there was this bull named Bulldog. I fell off pretty fast and I was upset, but that’s driven me to get on more bulls.”
Crimber said he gets “fired up” when he thinks about bull riding, and doing it is an “indescribable feeling.”
When competing in bull riding, Crimber said it’s based on points administered by judges, and for the performance to count, the rider has to stay on for at least 8 seconds.
“They judge the bull from zero to fifty and the rider from zero to fifty,” Crimber said. “Your score is based on how the bull performs and how you perform. If the bull kicks hard and spins, you’ll be in the high eighties or low nineties. If you ride him perfectly, you usually get a point or two over the bull. So if a bull is a forty-three-point bull and you’re a forty-six, you score an eighty-nine.”
Crimber said some bulls get better treatment than the riders do because “they’re the real star of the show.”
Make no mistake, it’s a dangerous activity. Crimber broke the bottom of his eye socket last year when the horn of a bull hit him in the eye. Regardless, Crimber said he waited to have surgery until after a bull riding competition he was scheduled for the following weekend.
Crimber is still only a teenager, but hopes to ride bulls for years to come. “When I feel like I need to stop, I’ll stop. But it’s gonna be a little while.”