Yes, bull riders are impressive. They get on a 1500-2000 pound bull three times, sometimes four, in the course of a weekend's event, and they do this about 30 weekends out of the year. When they hit the ground they are disoriented, possibly injured, and conditioned to do one thing: get away from the bull. It's the job of the PBR bullfighters to protect every one of those riders - that's about 120 riders a weekend - every time they work a PBR event. They do this by distracting the bull - either by touching it, grabbing it, waving at it, yelling at it, running in front of it, or anything else that will draw the bull's attention away from the rider. If a rider is hung up by his bull rope and is being pulled around by the bull, the bullfighters try to pull the rope free. If they can't, they cut the rope with a knife. They will grab a downed rider by the back of his vest and lift him out of harm's way with one hand. If need be, a bullfighter will put his own body over a rider's to protect him. I swear, sometimes they look like superheroes out there. If you don't want to watch bull riding for any other reason, watch it once just to see bullfighters at work.
They work in teams of three and they work as a team. The amazing thing is that when they aren't running, hauling, distracting, and being tossed around by bulls, they are often laughing. They laugh like they love their job. Like they think it's the best job in the world. Watching them, you think so too. And as one of them said, when they go to a bar with the riders, they sure don't end up paying for their own beer.
You could put together a bullfighter highlights video after every single PBR event. But here are a few examples of what bullfighters do.
The following is from a bullfighting competition in which it's just the bullfighters and the bulls.
Here's another video, focusing more on wrecks and tosses - which is too bad since the coolest thing bullfighters do is prevent them - but a great example of a distraction comes at around 1 minute 42 seconds, give or take a few. You can also see the knife come out a few times when a rider is hung up. (Warning: This is a good compilation, but it's a video made by a PBR fan, the quality is not perfect, and it's set to music, so turn your volume up, down, or off, whatever your preference.)
