OKLAHOMA CITY – At the PBR Heroes and Legends celebration at the National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum in Oklahoma City, PBR co-founder and former Director of Livestock Cody Lambert said that the mission of the PBR when it was started was to have the best riders in the world go up against the best bulls in the world.
Since 2011, the Brand of Honor has been recognizing the bovine half of that equation, honoring some of the most legendary bulls of all time. Among those enshrined are Little Yellow Jacket, Bushwacker, Asteroid, and Chicken on a Chain.
But the bull that joined that elite group on Saturday is, according to Lambert, “the most special.”
SweetPro’s Bruiser is in a class of his own.
“There’s been so many great bulls throughout our lifetime, but Bruiser is the most decorated bull,” Lambert said. “He won three World Championships in the PBR and a PRCA World Championship. He won the ABBI World Championship. He won everything at every level, and it wasn’t done in a way where he had a dirty trick, or he was dangerous or trying to be hurting guys. He just bucked.”
Lambert likens Bruiser to a football team telling its opponent what play it was about to run and then executing so well that they still couldn’t stop them.
“Bruiser had that. He had a pattern,” Lambert said. “He jumped and kicked and turned. He kicked the back of the chutes so hard that he had to have surgery on his hocks. He kicked the back of the chutes when he left there, bucking so hard that you had to get back because you might lose a finger if you had your hands on the pipes. And then he turned back to the left and just bucked, and very few guys could ride him. And then, if you rode him five, six seconds, here he came – he’d blow up in the air, sometimes with a little raring the other way. And the greatest rides that the top-level professionals ever made in their lives, they could get him rode, and they were going to score in the 90s up there every single time.”
Of 20 qualified rides aboard Bruiser at all levels of PBR competition, just four of them were below 90 points, and none were below 88.
RELATED: HD Page remembers SweetPro’s Bruiser on the eve of receiving Brand of Honor
Bruiser made his PBR debut in 2014 and won his first world title in 2016, repeating in 2017 and 2018, making him just the third bull in PBR history to win three World Championships, joining Little Yellow Jacket (2002-04) and Bushwacker (2011, 2013-14). In 2017, he was also named the PRCA Bull of the Year, joining Bodacious as just the second bull ever to win top bull honors in the PBR and PRCA in the same season.
He made 89 PBR outs from 2014 until his retirement in 2020 and had a 77.5% buckoff percentage with 61 45-point trips and five 47-point showings.
“There was never a time where a rider had ridden him in full control and couldn’t have scored 90 points or better,” Lambert said. “That’s from the beginning to the end. His last trip that he ever had, when he was old and he’d been through surgery on his hocks and he’d been down the road – right at the very end, his last out ever, he bucked off Daylon Swearingen, a World Champion. His very last out.”
But what really made Bruiser special, Lambert said, was his personality.
“He was part of the Page family,” he said. “There’s not been many bucking bulls that you can wash like a horse and brush, and you can pick up their feet and things like that. But they could put the bandages on his hocks and stuff, and he’d stand there and let him. He loved people, and he loved bucking off people, and he loved letting them have a chance to win.”
After Lambert joked about being unsure if stock contractor HD Page was Bruiser’s father or brother, Page took to the stage to honor his bull.
“There’s very few animal athletes that you really have that kind of connection with,” Page said. “We were traveling partners. “He was just a great animal athlete, a part of our family. He really was. He made my day better every day. Coming to the PBR, you run into a lot of good people, and that’s one thing that I look forward to about coming to these events. You’re always around a lot of good folks, and you look forward to seeing them. Bruiser was that for me every day. I would go to see him, and he would start my day off good, and if you’re having a bad day, I’d go hang out with him, and he’d make things a little better.”
A visibly emotional Page kept his remarks short and sweet – “trying not to be a sissy,” he joked – paying tribute to Bruiser, who passed away in May of 2022, with a simple message.
“He was a testament to the way everyone should live,” Page said. “He gave that type of effort every out. Nobody really knew how many injuries he’d overcome, and if he was able to talk to you, you still wouldn’t know it because he was that tight. He was just tough, and he wasn’t going to be whining about it. He was just that kind of bull. He’s made me a better person from getting to be around him.”
For Lambert’s part, as a PBR co-founder and former Director of Livestock, he’s seen all the great bulls come and go. But giving Bruiser the highest award a bovine can receive was a treasured experience.
“It’s just a really cool thing to be able to honor one of the all-time–“ Lambert corrected himself, “the all-time great bull like that. Every time we give this Brand of Honor, we can say that he’s the greatest of all time for whatever reason. We can say that about Bruiser for all the reasons.”
Photo courtesy of Andy Watson/Bull Stock Media
