LAS VEGAS - His friends call him shy.

But everyone calls him a World Champion.

On Sunday afternoon, Silvano Alves covered two bulls to claim the PBR title just 18 months after arriving in the United States.

His 2011 season was a study in contrasts.

Alves won $93,875 in Las Vegas and $1,456,964.07 over the course of the entire year. He and his fellow Brazilians dominated 2011, yet he went about claiming the World Championship quietly.

It wasn't about Built Ford Tough Series event wins - Robson Palermo and Validron de Oliveira both won more than he did. Alves won in Anaheim, Calif., Springfield, Mo., and Columbus, Ohio, though.

It wasn't about spectacular 90-point rides: He had only two in the regular season.  His 92.25 points on Yellow Jacket Jr. in the Built Ford Tough Championship Round on Sunday afternoon was just his third.
 
He had no 90-point rides in 2010, but today's championship round score ranks among the Top 30 scores in the 18-year history of the PBR World Finals.

Alves is wearing a gold buckle and is $1 million richer simply because he rode more bulls than everyone else.

He's the only rider this year to record 100 outs, and he made the whistle 69 times - 11 times more often than Oliveira. He was the only rider to finish the season ranked in the Top 5 who competed in all 29 regular-season events.

His 69-percent riding average was eight points better than Oliveira's, and a full 10 points better than that of Palermo, who won the World Finals average for the second time in four years.

'This is a dream that every bull rider has.'

Alves relied on his overall consistency rather than flash.

His longest buckoff streak in 2011 was three. He's never bucked off more than five in a row during his entire professional career.

Only once this year did go 0-for-weekend in a regularly formatted BFTS event.

"I'm really speechless," said a subdued Alves Sunday afternoon, smiling and staring at his gold buckle during a post-event press conference. "I'm really pleased with the outcome, and for the rest of the day I'm just going to celebrate."

Alves, 23, has dreamed of this day since he was a boy growing up in Pilar do Sul, Brazil.

Bull riding was a family tradition. His grandfather and father both rode, and at 14 he competed in his first professional event alongside his father. He finished second, and a year later he won his first event in Sao Paulo.

"This is a dream that every bull rider has," said Alves. "I managed to do this without becoming injured this year, which makes me very content with the outcome."

He took over the lead in the world standings coming out of the two-month summer break at an event in Thackerville, Okla., in July, and has been the No. 1 rider in the world for the past 10 weeks.

Alves is the first rider to win a world title a season after winning PBR Rookie of the Year, and only the second former top rookie to claim the championship.

While his own goal is to win four titles, and while former champions Guilherme Marchi and Renato Nunes believe he'll win five or six, Alves is content with enjoying the one he has.

"I can't predict what will happen," he said, not willing to speculate on the future.