Rank Pen of PBR Bulls Dominates Inaugural TKO Takeover Amid Roaring Kansas City Crowd

PBR’s rare Thursday show in Kansas City was a coming out party of sorts, which lived up to the advance hype from the moment the letters “T K O” were burned into the dirt to pump the boisterous crowd for the wildest 8 seconds in sports.

Billed as “TKO Takeover” – branding consecutive PBR, UFC and WWE events Thursday through Monday inside T-Mobile Center – the bull riding featured a unique team competition format – “Missouri vs. the World.”

The Show Me State squad brought rivals together: the Kansas City Outlaws, who raised their 2024 regular season championship banner to the rafters of their home arena, and the Missouri Thunder formed an 8-rider team. In the final game, they played a World Team formed earlier from the results of four 3-on-3 rivalry games.

Rowdy fans cheering in the crowd at the PBR TKO in Kansas City. — Fans loving the action | PBR

TKO Group Holdings, Inc. acquired PBR earlier this year, and the 32-year-old bull riding organization joined sports entertainment powerhouses UFC and WWE. Company executives in the house were all smiles for the start of the unprecedented sports tripleheader, observing elusive “synergy” come alive as fans partied deliriously on a school night.

The stone-faced bulls, on the other hand, seemed intent on collectively showing who rules the roost in PBR, ostensibly auditioning for UFC heavyweight cards.

The horn-headed ringleader of several trips to sports medicine was, appropriately, the newest bull in the pen of UFC’s boss.

In bull riding circles, no one will ever mistake Dana White’s Playmate for Mr. Congeniality.

Bulls are like people, each with a different personality. For Dana White’s Playmate, check the thesaurus for “surly.”

Thursday night, the testy, cantankerous bull began bucking inside the closed chute before Dustin Herman even nodded his head.

Many are still wondering how the limp rider pulled from a scary thrashing to safety finally got up and walked away.

Beyond that mishap, it was all business for the bulls, taking care of business, and taking over TKO Takeover.

After twelve 12 consecutive riders were tossed and whipped and flung to the dirt, two young Brazilians from the Carolina Cowboys, Murilo Henrique de Oliveira and Eric Henrique Domingos, would step up and make a case for a spot in the Cowboys starting lineup when the 2025 PBR Teams season begins in July.

In their opener, Carolina shut out the Nashville Stampede, 166.25-0.00 by virtue of Oliveira and Domingos making the whistle. The duo again conquered their bulls in the final game. With the Austin Gamblers’ Dener Barbosa also scoring, the World beat Missouri, 245.25 – 173.5.

Even with their home state on the losing end of the final score, fans were cheering every qualified ride in appreciation of the required grit and try.

“Kansas City is a knowledgeable sports town that appreciates excellence,” said PBR Voice Matt West. “These fans know what it takes in courage and athleticism to stay on these bulls.”

Among the out-of-towners in the house were four with a prime vantage point above the bucking chutes.

The WWE team American Made will be in action at Monday night’s WWE Raw, taking place merely eight days after record-setting WrestleMania 41 in Las Vegas, which hosted more than 120,000 fans over two days.

Watching bull riders flying like rag dolls in a hurricane, American Made was impressed with the bull power…and borderline insanity of the cowboys on top of them.

“I’ve been to the Olympic games, we do shows every week, and this is the most violent, vicious stuff I’ve ever seen,” Chad Gable said to West, a self- proclaimed uber fan of UFC and WWE, during a mid-event interview beamed to the arena’s jumbotron. “You’ve got some tough boys here. You couldn’t pay me to get on one of these bulls.”

His partner Julius Creed added that “these bulls are some of the scariest things you can step into the ring with. They make 7-foot-3 monsters we get in the ring with look like light work. It’s very impressive.”

Julius, Chad and Brutus Creed agreed that teammate Ivy Nile, “our unassuming pit bull,” standing 5 foot 2 with titanium arms and the agility of a snow leopard, would be the only member of American Made who could stay on a PBR bull.

“She’d ride it for 10 seconds,” Chad said.

American Made is less interested in who from WWE would be the best bull rider. What they’d really like to see is two-time PBR World Champion J.B. Mauney competing in WWE.

The throwback cowboy called “the last great American hero” by ESPN’s Marty Smith would slide right into an outfit named American Made. Who knows; after the mashup tripleheader in Kanas City this weekend, the realm of possibilities has widened for three growing sports putting compelling chaos under one roof.

The inaugural TKO Takeover, presented by VeChain resumes on Saturday night with UFC FIGHT NIGHT featuring Ian Machado Garry facing off against Carlos Prates.

Let the mayhem continue.

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