PUEBLO, Colo. – When Cooper Davis showed up on the PBR scene in 2015, he was a self-proclaimed chubby kid.

“When I first got here, I’d come from the rodeo world, I’d been to the NFR, and never really had to work at it to stay on bulls,” Davis said. “But you show up, and you’re getting on the rankest bulls every weekend, and it’ll show you really what it takes.”

He was blanked in his first five premier series events that season, going 0-for-11 to begin the year. But he famously started a strict diet and exercise regiment and lost 24 pounds in two months that fall.

“At the time, I wasn’t putting in the work, and it was showing,” Davis said. “I was struggling just to stay on tour. I wasn’t riding some of the bulls that were the easiest. After putting the work in, I turned into… this.”

Considering he immediately won the 2015 PBR World Finals and 2015 Rookie of the Year honors and followed that up with the 2016 World Championship the next year, that’s not a bad thing.

Of course, his world-title season wasn’t a fairytale, even though it had the fairytale ending.

“There were a lot of ups and downs in 2016,” Davis said. “I had high expectations. I’d just won the Finals, and the beginning of the season didn’t start off too well. I was a little bit hurt and kind of struggling, and it seemed like, by the time I got things lined out in the second half, I broke my collarbone in August and rode through events with it broke, not knowing it was broke, and rode pretty well. I think that’s the best I ever rode in my career, is with a broke collarbone. I was so scared to take any jerk from it that, fundamentally, I was doing everything correct.”

He underwent surgery on Sept. 14 to repair his broken clavicle. He was back in action just 17 days later, missing only two events. Thirty-two days after his surgery, he regained the world No. 1 ranking.

Fifty-three days later, he won the world title.

“I remember waking up in the hotel room the last day of the Finals and just having this feeling that I was going to win,” Davis said. “Thinking it into existence. It worked out.”

These days, as the PBR celebrates its 30^th anniversary, Davis is in the conversation of the Top 30 bull riders of all time.

“It’s pretty special,” Davis said. “I think, when you first start a career like this, none of that goes into thought. It’s just wanting to show up every day and give it your all. So I guess to see that people think that your career has been that good, it means a lot.”

But Davis is humble regarding his ability and achievements, confidently selecting Justin McBride, J.B. Mauney and Jose Vitor Leme as the three greatest riders in PBR history.

“I wish we could all put them in their prime and make them ride against each other because they were just amazing,” he said. “There’s no bull that you knew it was a slam dunk when they got on them. You feel like they could ride anything. Those are the GOATs.”

These days, Davis is a 28-year-old veteran in the locker room, no longer the fresh-faced phenom he was back in 2016. It’s a very different role for him, but one that he says he enjoys.

“It goes fast,” Davis said. “I remember being the kid that was scared to talk to my heroes in the locker room. Now I’ve got kids that come in and tell me they’ve been watching me since they were 13 years old. That’s weird to me. It’s a fun role to play, but sometimes you wish you were still the kid.”

Being older and wiser, however, has its advantages.

“You know how to approach it mentally a little bit better,” he said. “You don’t let your feelings get too involved. But your body’s not all there either sometimes, so you’re dealing with a bunch of injuries, and that weighs on you.

“If I had all the knowledge that I have now and the ability I had then, you might be talking about me as one of the GOATs, too,” he added with a good-natured smile.

Davis is still out there keeping up with the kids. This past weekend in Billings, Montana, he won his second event of the season at the PBR Wrangler Invitational, presented by Cooper Tires, going 3-for-4. While he has doctored out of the mid-week event in Everett, Washington, he is ranked No. 4 in the Unleash The Beast standings with the PBR World Finals on May 12-21 in Fort Worth, Texas, just over three weeks away.

“We’re still chasing Jose,” Davis said with a chuckle. “My plan this year is to keep my foot on the gas, and I’m still close enough to catch them. If I could win another world title, do that, and go another couple of years. Hopefully, after I’m done (with my riding career), I get to commentate and talk about these guys.”

Whether he has another world title in his future this year or not, Davis has no complaints about his career and who he’s gotten to spend it with.

“I’ve gotten to live the dream,” Davis said. “I’ve got to travel with my family, and I’ve got to do most all this stuff with them. So to be able to do this with my little boy and my wife, it’s what every kid dreams of.”

Photo courtesy of Josh Homer/Bull Stock Media