ARLINGTON, Texas – Following Kid Rock’s Rock N Rodeo in AT&T Stadium, Jokers co-head coach Joe Beaver walked into the post-event press conference late, beer in one hand and big check in the other.

“Hey, looks like a bunch of winners up there!” he yelled at his team assembled onstage.

Indeed, the Jokers were no joke inside the home of the Dallas Cowboys, leading the innovative team-formatted rodeo nearly wire to wire to win the second iteration of the event.

The Jokers kicked things off with a gold medal in the bareback riding, following that up with another gold medal in the saddle bronc riding.

The Convoy, who ultimately faced off against the Jokers in the championship round, won the barrel racing, but the Jokers were back in the driver’s seat with gold in the team roping. The Convoy earned gold in the breakaway roping and tie-down roping before the Jokers secured their event-leading fourth gold in the steer wrestling.

“We did have one thing, and we talked about it: we wanted to win the first two events, because that’s where we’ve been behind so much,” Beaver said. “And man, our guys stepped up right off the bat. We asked them, and they stepped up right off the bat. We don’t have a weak spot.”

In 2024, the Free Riders took the event win, earning three gold medals en route to the championship round, including the first two disciplines. Getting off to a hot start may very well be the key to victory.

It was huge for the Jokers, who, in 2024, won one gold medal (saddle bronc riding), two silver medals and finished third an additional two times. They were in contention to advance to the championship round but were edged out by the Misty Mountain Hop (one gold, two silver, three third-place finishes).

“We got our asses kicked the last couple times, and nobody likes to lose up here, and that’s why I picked them,” Beaver said. “It’s just like at the end – we’d ask ‘em, ‘You want on that horse?’ ‘Yeah, I want on him.’ If you don’t have that mentality and that grit, gut – there’s a lot of National Finals world champions here, and there’s a reason for that. Winners win, quitters quit, and losers make excuses.”

There were no excuses for the Jokers on Friday night.

In the championship round steer wrestling, the Jokers’ Dakota Eldridge faced off against the Convoy’s Jesse Brown. His horse ran ahead of the steer, a rare mistake, but Brown’s horse had done the same thing. So Eldridge continued his pursuit of the steer, taking a tumble before ultimately wrestling the steer to the ground before Brown.

It wasn’t pretty, but it got the job done.

“Uh, that brought me back to the high school rodeo days,” Eldridge said with a laugh. “I was like, ‘Well, here we go. Suck it up and get back up.’ I didn’t know what Jesse was doing at that point, but it was just live or die. That’s part of being a team, and that’s a cool aspect of it.”

Barrel racer Brittany Pozzi Tonozzi chimed in on the appeal of a team-formatted event.

“I think what’s cool about this whole thing is all of us, except the team ropers, our sports are so individual and it’s always about yourself,” she said. “You’ve never had this team concept, and this has been so fun, to cheer our teammates on and to be a part of this. We were all back there for every event in the finals. That’s just something you can’t experience anywhere else.”

The head-to-head nature of the event, co-head coach Sid Steiner thinks, adds a little extra juice to every out.

“There’s no one in this arena that’s competing that’s not world-class,” Steiner said. “They’re all world-class. We chose them and we put them in a good spot. They are what they are, and they’re all phenomenal. But when you go against one other person, it becomes very personal. That adds an element of, at a rodeo, ‘Well, he outdrew me,’ or whatever. When you get beat head-up, it’s just more personal, I think. It adds something to it, and nobody likes to lose.”

“We can talk to the other coaches and teams now,” Beaver said. “We couldn’t even talk to them earlier. We told (our team), ‘If you see one of them broke down on the side of the road, don’t you dare stop.’”

While the Jokers wouldn’t reveal the pre- and post-event rituals that made them so successful so quickly, whatever they did worked mighty well.

Fitting, perhaps, for the team helmed by a man nicknamed Sid Rock to win Kid Rock’s Rock N Rodeo.

“Man, I love being on the dirt,” Steiner said. “And honestly, watching all these guys compete at a high level gives me goosebumps. I’m a passionate person, and I’m a fan of everybody here. The runs these guys made tonight – team roping runs, and breakaway, bulldogging… to see what (JD) Struxness and Dakota did, that was my event, and to watch them, I was somewhat in awe of what they did, and then what Dakota did at the end to win us this big check. That’s harder than what people think. You would think it’s a mistake, but that’s some of the hardest stuff to do.”

“When you put pressure on them,” Beaver said, “they answer.”

Photo courtesy of Bull Stock Media