PUEBLO, Colo. – Nearly 30 years ago, a young bullfighter named Frank Newsom was working a pro rodeo in Crossett, Arkansas, for the legendary Jim Shoulders.
Shoulders, a 16-time PRCA world champion in the all-around, bull riding and bareback riding, was nearing 70 years old, but he was still competitive enough to get into the arena himself.
“Every bucking bull that might be a little bit mean, he would tell them to shut the gate and let us fight ‘em,” Newsom said. “And he would be on horseback. I remember being locked up tight, fighting these bulls, and you could hear him right behind you, just hear him going, ‘Yeah, man! There you go! Take him to the barrel!’ He wasn’t 15 feet behind us on horseback.
“He knew what it took to put on a show, and he knew what it took to compete, even at his age, when I was around him. That fire never went out. He still had that fire in him, and it was just really cool to be around him.”
Shoulders passed away in 2007 at age 79, and Newsom would go on to have one of the most storied careers in bullfighting history, fighting at the PBR World Finals 20 times before retiring in 2022.
This year, Newsom will receive the Jim Shoulders Lifetime Achievement Award, which recognizes those who, throughout their lives and professional careers, have significantly contributed to the advancement of the sport of bull riding and rodeo.
The 2024 Heroes & Legends Ceremony will be held on Thursday, July 11, at the National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum in Oklahoma City.
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“I feel really honored to be getting it,” Newsom said. “It’s hard to put it into words because it seems like, when you say it, it just ain’t big enough. I just think a lot of Jim Shoulders. I got to be around him before he died, work under him as a bullfighter, and he was a great man and a competitor. He loved seeing good bullfighting and loved seeing guys compete and do good and putting on a good show for the crowd. He was quite the guy. And it’s a big deal just to get recognized for your hard work, too.”
Newsom grew up in Oklahoma, working on ranches with his dad and spending all his time around cattle and cowboys. They didn’t get to rodeo much because they were always working, but that all changed when his dad got a job for a man who rode bulls. They did labor around the ranch but bucked bulls in the evenings, and Newsom would give it a go.
“Some of the older guys that were working with us rode bulls, and we would take turns,” he said. “I was actually trying to ride them. I wasn’t afraid of them. I had a lot of try. I just wasn’t good at it. And we would take turns saving each other, and man, I just knew that was my spot. I had a lot of talent at it. So that’s kind of what I started focusing on.”
While Newsom had the support of his employer, his dad was less than thrilled.
“My dad really was against it, and a lot of other men I knew were against it,” he said. “Looking back, a lot of years later, my dad was just like, ‘Man, I just didn’t think you could make any money in it.’ I was like, ‘Alright, I get that.’ We fought for a long time about it. We were mad at each other for a long time about it, but after raising a son, I can see where he’s coming from. To him, it seemed like a reckless thing to do, and I wasn’t going to make any money.”
It took Newsom’s father four or five years to come around to the idea, after his son had proved himself and gotten to fight bulls at the Fort Worth Stock Show and Rodeo. The following year, he would work his first Wrangler National Finals Rodeo and PBR World Finals.
“I don’t know that he ever liked it, because he was just a cow man,” Newsom said. “But I think he started accepting it when he started seeing me really make something of it.”
“Make something of it” would be an understatement. Newsom was on the dirt for the PBR’s biggest moments for two decades, racking up a resume that will be tough to match, let alone beat.
Looking back on his career, Newsom said he can’t even begin to pick a favorite moment.
“There’s so many high moments, so many cool moments,” Newsom said. “There were a lot of hard moments, and some of them you almost hold maybe closer to you or hold onto them a little bit more, just because you had to battle. You had to trust in your lord, and you had to trust in what you did.”
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Newsom recalls breaking his leg before the 2021 PBR World Finals as one of those pivotal moments.
“I had a metal plate in there already, so it was stable, but the pain was real,” he said. “Me and my wife, there were a lot of feelings there. Like, we’re about to go into this Finals, and it’s tough when you’re feeling pretty good, and here we are with a broken leg. Of course, she had some fear there, and I knew I could do it, but it’s still a tough deal.
“I remember making it all the way through the Finals and doing good – I did my job. I did it good – and how hard of a battle that was. To finish that last day, and finish on a high note – Jose (Vitor Leme) rode Woopaa for 98.75 points, the highest-marked ride ever – it was quite the thing to sit down, and it was just like, ‘Man, we did it.’ I was just thankful.”
Newsom’s career, unfortunately, ended with a moment like that. Just a week before he was set to retire at the 2022 PBR World Finals, he was seriously injured at an Ultimate Bullfighters event that he wasn’t even participating in.
Newsom was in the crowd when he saw Ryan Pfizer getting cornered and hooked by a bull he knew had overmatched him.
Newsom had started his bullfighting career with Pfizer’s father, who would bring Ryan to Newsom’s bullfighting schools. As he got older, drug addiction wrecked his life, but he’d begun to turn things around two years before that fateful day in the bullfighting arena.
Pfizer was a day short of being one year sober, and Newsom couldn’t watch his wreck get any worse.
“It’s a bad deal, and before I know it, I’m in the arena, I’m heading that way,” Newsom said. “You look back, and you think about what you could’ve done differently. I would’ve broke down when that bull come off and come towards me, took him on in the middle of the arena instead of letting him get me up against the fence. But in the moment, it’s just happening. And next thing you know, you’re hurt. You’re at the hospital, and you’re spending the night there, and you’ve got all that time to think about it. You’re just mad. But then, it kind of dawned on me. I was like, ‘You know? I ain’t going to regret this. I ain’t going to live in regret. This is the life. You truly do this job, it can be over today, at any point.’ Obviously, there are ways I should’ve done it differently, but I just kind of made up my mind. I’m not going to live in regret over it. I was blessed to get to do it for a long time. And if that’s the way it was supposed to end, so be it.
“But I see that kid now, and he’s doing so good. He’s worked a job every day since then, after he got healed up. He’s a solid bullfighter now. He’s been clean now for three or four years. He’s doing really good. So, like I said, I don’t have any regrets. I do have regrets, but that ain’t one of them; I’ll put it that way.”
A devastating end to a career, to be sure, but perhaps a fitting one for a man who put his body on the line for cowboys for a quarter of a century.
Since his in-ring retirement, Newsom has worked as a welder but stays intimately involved in the sport as the PBR’s Bullfighting Director.
If you notice stellar bullfighting at a PBR event, Frank Newsom is still the one behind it.
“I always wanted to be the best, and be my best, be at the top, and be around the rankest bulls and best bull riders,” Newsom said. “I’ve been retired now for two years, and it seems like I’m just now really getting to where you’re seeing some things, seeing the bigger picture, because you’re just focused on the job and what you’ve got to do and how to prepare and how to be ready to do your best that week.
“We’ve been at it pretty hard for a while. And it’s good. It’s a feeling of accomplishment.”
Photo courtesy of Josh Homer/Bull Stock Media
