As 19-year-old bull-riding star John Crimber tightens his grip atop a 1-ton bull waiting for the steel gate to open, the last voice he is likely to hear is from the man he calls “pai,” Portuguese for father.
As they huddle in this final moment, John and his father, Brazilian-born Professional Bull Riders icon Paulo Crimber, have a history that between them includes four broken vertebrae in their spines, broken teeth, fractured hands, ribs and collarbones. John was millimeters from losing an eye when a bull smashed its horn through his protective mask, breaking his orbital bone. He delayed surgery for a week so he could ride in the 2023 Texas high school bull-riding state finals.
As Paulo leans over the cage to tighten John’s rope, they have no idea what is about to happen. Also John’s coach, Paulo’s focus tends to be on technique and tendencies he’s picked up about the bull.
“I think he does get worried, but he never tells me. But I can tell he is sometimes, when we do get one of them tough bulls,” John says. “We just keep it simple. He’s helped me a lot with my mental game, keeping calm.”
When the gate opens, there are few bull riders better than John Crimber, a generational talent who at 18 was the No. 1 overall draft pick in the PBR Camping World Team Series league.
In his first season with the Florida Freedom — who call Amerant Bank Arena in Sunrise home, with Paulo the head coach — John was named 2024 league MVP and also MVP of the league championship tournament in Las Vegas.
Relentlessly polite and humble, John deflects the “superstar” tag he’s often saddled with by PBR pundits. Ditto any comparisons to LeBron James, another teenager who took his league by storm.
“Shoot, I don’t know about all that, but I’m all right, I guess,” John says in a recent interview at the AC Hotel in Sunrise, when the Freedom were in town for preseason promotional appearances. “My lord and savior Jesus Christ put this talent in me to go out there and do great things.”
See for yourself when the Freedom host their first and only PBR Camping World Team Series tournament of the 2025 season, called Florida Freedom Days, at Amerant Bank Arena on Friday, Aug. 8, through Sunday, Aug. 10.
‘God built him to ride bulls. As a kid, as a person, as a bull rider, he’s the whole package.’ — PBR Hall of Famer Paulo Crimber on son John
Standing 5-foot-7 and 140 pounds in jeans, boots, a Western shirt and trucker hat, John is boy-band handsome and a marketing team’s dream. PBR calls him “the most exciting young bull-riding prospect” in league history. His career earnings are already more than $1 million, nearly what Paulo earned in the entirety of his legendary career.
“God built him to ride bulls,” Paulo says. “As a kid, as a person, as a bull rider, he’s the whole package.”
With a signature handlebar mustache, carefully waxed and curled at the ends, Paulo, 45, routinely gets noticed by bull-riding fans around the country. But the attention has been changing.
“A lot of them recognize me as John’s dad. Which is OK. I’m proud,” says Paulo, a longtime Texas resident with a lyrical drawl. “As a parent, you raise your kid to be better than you were. I think I done good on that.”
Dangerous business
In a South Florida sports culture ever more obsessed with the violence of Ultimate Fighting Championship bouts and the 200-mph daredevilry of Grand Prix auto racing, PBR may be in the perfect place at the perfect time. John says bull riding is “100% the most dangerous” spectator sport.
“Them guys driving a car, they can control what they’re doing. Bull riding, you can’t control what that animal is doing. That’s a gosh-dang beast. When that gate opens, there’s no flag, no referee. We can’t stop the fight with a bull. It’s just life or death right there,” he says.
There is essentially one rule in professional bull riding: If the rider can stay atop the bull for eight seconds, they get a score for the ride. And they get to walk away. Depending on their ultimate score, riders can make hundreds of dollars or tens of thousands, and earn a belt buckle.
The bull, which has been bred for this purpose and can weigh 1,800 to 2,000 pounds, also is scored for jumping, bucking, spinning velocity and overall nastiness. The more statistically dangerous the bull, the better the score for the successful rider. Bulls come with nicknames such as Man Hater, Whiplash, the Kraken and Snuggles.
After more than 30 years of slow and steady growth since PBR’s debut in 1992, the popularity of bull riding has surged in the past few years.
More than 1,000 riders compete in PBR events around the world, most from the United States, but many from Brazil. Cowboy culture is prominent in parts of Brazil, says Paulo Crimber, who grew up in Olímpia, a small town five hours outside São Paulo. Eight of the 10 bull riders on the Florida Freedom are from Brazil.
PBR reports its 2024 attendance increased more than 20% from the previous year to a record 1.43 million fans, and the organization awarded $15.5 million in prize money, a $2 million increase over 2023 and more than double the total in 2022. PBR says it has gained over 1 million social-media followers so far in 2025 alone.
Best of the best
The most prominent and lucrative PBR competition is the Unleash the Beast Series, featuring top individual riders competing against each other in 24 events from November through May, culminating in the PBR World Finals, a multiday competition known as the Super Bowl of bull riding.
The 2025 PBR World Finals took place at AT&T Stadium in Arlington, Texas, and awarded a record-setting $3.26 million in prize money, including $1 million to Brazilian Jose Vitor Leme for winning his third PBR World Championship.
After a regular season that included several weeks ranked as No. 1, along with a broken hand and fractures to the L3 and L4 vertebrae in his back, John Crimber was among the finalists at the 2025 PBR World Finals. During the competition, he suffered a broken right collarbone — and, of course, continued to ride until he was eliminated on the final day of the competition.
“[Doctors] told me not to get on, but it’s for a world title and a million dollars. I actually stayed on the first bull, but they wore me out the next day. With a broken collarbone it’s kind of tough, but I did enjoy it,” John says. (Below is PBR video of John riding that first bull with a broken collarbone.)
There are currently no women on the Unleash the Beast Tour, but they are coming: Along with several dedicated bull-riding circuits for women, PBR and the World Champions Rodeo Alliance recently collaborated on the inaugural Women’s Rodeo World Championship, which took place during intermission of the 2025 PBR World Finals at AT&T Stadium.
As part of an ongoing effort to expand beyond its Western roots, in 2022 the organization created the PBR Camping World Team Series (PBR Teams for short), which turned a traditionally individual sport into a team competition.
Including the Florida Freedom, which debuted last year, the PBR Teams league has squads in 10 cities across the United States who meet for 12 weekend tournaments during the season. Each team has one home tournament per season, along with two neutral-site competitions, with matches set up in basketball and hockey arenas filled with more than 1.5 million pounds of dirt for the occasion.
The Florida Freedom is owned by Heath Freeman, chairman of Tribune Publishing, the parent company of the South Florida Sun Sentinel. Freeman is also executive chairman of the AVP (Association of Volleyball Professionals) and owner of the Miami-based BIG3 basketball franchise called Miami 305.
The Freedom finished third in PBR Teams last year, and John believes the squad can win the league in 2025. At the very least, he promises Freedom fans at Amerant Bank Arena “the most action-packed eight seconds you’ve ever seen. You don’t know if it’s going to be a wreck or a good ride, but it’s going to be dang-sure thrills.”
Last week, PBR announced a multiyear deal with The CW Network to broadcast PBR Teams tournaments each Saturday and Sunday, beginning with the matches at Amerant Bank Arena. CW coverage will continue though the league’s championship tournament in Las Vegas on Oct. 25-26.
The league also continues to be shown through CBS Game of the Week broadcasts, PBR’s YouTube channel, RidePass on Pluto TV and the PBR app.
Ryan Sharkey, senior vice president of programming and content strategy for The CW, says PBR Teams will be a perfect fit alongside the network’s broadcasts of the NASCAR Xfinity Series.
“The CW will be a can’t-miss destination to experience two of the nation’s fastest-growing sports with some of the most passionate fan bases in the country,” Sharkey said in a statement shared by PBR, calling bull riding “a whole new level of grit, adrenaline and edge-of-your-seat action.”
Neck on the line
Paulo Crimber was one of the best bull riders of his era, a 10-time qualifier for the Professional Bull Riders world championships who was inducted into the PBR Hall of Fame in 2024.
That success came at a price: He was PBR’s No. 1 ranked bull rider at different points during the 2008 season when he was thrown and landed on his head, breaking the C1 vertebra in his neck. After five months of recovery, and against the advice of doctors, Paulo returned to the sport. On his first attempt, in Orlando, a bull named Rough Neck landed on him, breaking the C1 again, along with his sternum and collarbone.
Doctors used bone from his hip to fuse the broken vertebra, and at age 28 Paulo retired to his ranch in Decatur, Texas, near Fort Worth.
Paulo came to the U.S. in 1998 with only a passion for American cowboy culture and dreams of continuing the successful bull-riding career he had started in Brazil. He taught himself English by watching “Dora the Explorer” and “SpongeBob SquarePants” cartoons.
After some early bull-riding success, he turned his winnings into the Decatur property, where he lives with John, wife Maria and daughter Helena, now a high school student. Paulo and Maria became American citizens in 2023.
After retirement, Paulo threw himself into another role as an ambassador for bull riders from Brazil who come to the U.S. with their own dreams. Over the years, he and Maria have housed dozens of riders and their families on their 400-acre spread, offering translation, transportation, English lessons, help with children, medical care and other support. Many of the top Brazilian PBR riders now have their own properties in and around Decatur.
“God has a plan for all of us. That was his plan for me, helping the people that need me,” Paulo says.
Life and death
It was in that role that Paulo took the most emotional ride of his life: In 2021, he had to inform Decatur-area neighbor and old bull-riding friend Flavio Campos that his son had been killed in a competition in California. Amadeu Campos Silva was 22 when he was thrown from a bull that then stomped on his chest.
“I had to go and deliver them the news. That was one of the toughest things I ever did in my life,” Paulo says.
Flavio Campos asked Paulo to make the arrangements to have his son’s body returned to Texas and then prepare it for burial.
“He told me, ‘No father should dress the body of his son. And if you cannot do it, I understand. But I know he respected you a lot and I do, too, and I’m asking you this, and I hope you can do it,’” Paulo says.
In an interview at the AC Hotel that included very few pauses on Paulo’s part, he takes a moment.
“I told him yes, but [sighs] … that was very tough. When I saw him laying down on that table. He was hard, like a rock. And I had just seen him a few days back. … His dad and mom gave me all the stuff that he wanted him to wear. A little necklace, underwear, the pants. [They told me] the way he likes to wear his shirt, tucked inside his underwear. I did everything as he asked me to. It was tough, but God gave me the strength to do it,” Paulo says.
And, so, if you ask Paulo if he worries about his son, his response is quick: “Oh, yeah. It’s a dangerous sport.”
And if you ask John if he is scared as he climbs on the bull, he’s equally quick: “Scared? No. I’m never scared. I don’t think bull riding and being scared go together. That’s my happiness, I guess. That’s the only thing that makes me happy.”
IF YOU GO
WHAT: PBR Freedom Days
WHEN: 7:45 p.m. Friday, Aug. 8; 6:45 p.m. Saturday, Aug. 9; 1:45 p.m. Sunday, Aug. 10
WHERE: Amerant Bank Arena, 1 Panther Parkway, Sunrise
COST: Tickets start at $34.85 for one day, $193 for a three-day pass, at SeatGeek.com
INFORMATION: PBR.com
Staff writer Ben Crandell can be reached at bcrandell@sunsentinel.com. Follow on IG: @BenCrandell.
Originally Published: