Xtreme Bulls Tour replacing State Fair Rodeo
BY ED GODFREY, Outdoors Editor, egodfrey@opubco.com
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Published: September 25, 2009
For the first time in almost 50 years, there won’t be a State Fair Rodeo. Instead, the bulls are going solo.
The rodeo has been replaced by a two-night performance of the
Professional Rodeo Cowboys Association Xtreme Bulls Tour, which begins tonight at the Jim Norick
State Fair Arena.
Some of the PRCA’s best bull riders and best bulls will be butting heads (hopefully not literally, although some fans do come for the wrecks).
Bull riding is the only event in rodeo that can stand alone and attract enough paying fans to make it profitable.
It began with the
Lazy E Arena’s Bullnanza, considered the granddaddy of big-time bull riding.
Bullnanza, the first held in 1989, was mass-marketed and began drawing huge crowds beyond just traditional rodeo fans.
Since then, bull riding has evolved into the
Professional Bull Riders tour and last season’s nine-stop top level of the Xtreme Bulls tour in the PRCA.
Since the birth of the PBR and PRCA’s Xtreme bulls tour, the popularity of bull riding has soared. The profits have skyrocketed, and breeding bulls has become a very big business.
"It’s made the bulls worth a lot more money because there is a lot more venues where they can go,” said
Bennie Beutler, owner and general manager of Beutler and
Son Rodeo Company in
Elk City, of the additional bull riding events.
”They are selling some bulls for six figures now. Everybody in
Texas and
Oklahoma that has a back yard is in the bull business now.”
Beutler will have some of his rankest bulls in
Oklahoma City at the State Fair: .38 Special, Little Ivan, Deputy Sheriff and Phantom, just to name a few.
"Rodeo fans know more about the bulls than they do the cowboys,” Beutler said. "They sell more stuffed animals of bulls than they do the T-shirts of the cowboys.”
In Oklahoma City, there will be 40 different bull riders each night with the top 10 advancing to a short round each night.
The bull riders are competing for a share of a $15,000 purse. Action begins at 7:30 both tonight and Saturday night.
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