Dana White Accepts Cowboy Cerrone’s Audacious Challenge To Ride His Wild Bull, Twisted Steel

UFC Legend has never shied from a fight. Now, he’s facing his most daunting and dangerous bout.

Cowboy Cerrone is leaning against a steel pipe fence inside Madison Square Garden, his eyes intently following a large white bull with black spots clank his way up the corkscrew corridor toward the back pens set up five floors above Penn Station.

The maze of steel leads to the famed arena, punctuated by its iconic spoke-wheel ceiling. The night before, this hallowed space was dominated by the brilliant white ice of the New York Rangers. Through a herculean feat of road-crew blood, sweat, and tears, that glossy sheen is now covered with nearly two million pounds of brown dirt trucked in from New Jersey. Cecil B. DeMille could be shooting a bull riding movie here.

And let’s all agree it doesn’t exactly smell like the perfume counter at Macy’s.

The bull, Dana White’s Twisted Steel, barrels toward his personal holding pen. The term “china shop” comes to mind. Cerrone gives a low whistle. The bull jerks to a skidding stop, spraying a haze of pine shavings.

A big dude with a beard right off the cough drop box slams shut the gate behind the bull. He becomes still, save slightly twitching back muscles.

Cerrone, who once set the promotion’s record with 20 knockdowns, goes into a low crouch. He’s facing off against the cocky animal oozing self-confidence, peering at him the way an art connoisseur examines a rare painting uptown at the MET.

Twisted Steel puffs his chest as if he knows he’s being sized up by a UFC Hall of Famer. He has a stout knockdown record of his own. Only three riders in 34 attempts have managed to stay on the 5-year-old bull for the required 8 seconds to register a score.

“He’s a big boy,” Cerrone says. “Thick. But he’s got gentle eyes.”

Cerrone, who everyone around these parts simply calls “Cowboy,” has been a fan of professional bull riding for as long as he can recall. He got the name Cowboy from acting like his grandmother’s cat.

“That cat, Cowboy, never listened and ran around wild,” he says. “At 2 or 3 years old, Cowboy became my name and a lifestyle for me. I fell in love with it, acquired it, and made it my own. It was more bein’ a wild kid who didn’t listen, paid no mind to nothin’, named after a wild cat.”

Oh, yes, Cerrone was wild. His grandparents, both doctors who he went to live with, quickly learned bail is always paid in cash. They loved him as hard as you can love a wild buck.

Bull Stock Media, courtesy PBR

Cowboy is in New York representing Monster Energy, a savvy marketer leaning into action-sports. They’re PBR’s largest partner and presenter of the Buck Off at The Garden for the past 12 years. But he’d likely be here even if it weren’t for required appearances at a tentpole event. He loves bull riding.

Growing up Cowboy in Colorado, the blue-collar country boy saw more bull ridings than he can remember. He even rode bulls as a teenager. Maybe he’ll make it to PBR one day, he wondered. But he gave up the rodeo life for MMA and never turned back.

The arrival of the bull athletes, dubbed “The Running of the Bulls,” is being covered by a phalanx of photographers lining the fence. Now that Dana White has a championship-caliber bull, there’s more interest in these marvelous animal athletes escaping the sure hamburger-factory death sentence befalling all other male bovines. For his part, Twisted Steel is the most famous bucker since the mighty Bushwacker, who graced the cover of ESPN The Magazine’s body issue.

If Cowboy has learned anything from the bull’s owner, the tuned-in showman Dana White, it is the value of the bold and dramatic. Last October, White brought his prized athlete to UFC headquarters, calling it “Take Your Bull to Work Day.” He bought dozens of tickets for UFC employees to see him buck. PBR set up a 24/7 camera in bull housing, where the animal athletes stay, for the world to watch Twisted Steel’s every move.

Now Cowboy plans to get into the fun. Something is up his sleeve. He’s just not ready to share it yet.

Courtesy PBR

That Friday night at MSG, it’s as if PBR is throwing a party and a sporting event breaks out.

The joint is jumping, packed and rocking. It’s a raw Northeastern January outside, but in these corridors, Daisy Dukes run wild and free. Fans in the stands are on their feet singing. Some are pouring beer into boots and sneakers and swigging away.

Meantime, Conner Halverson, a good-looking Great Plains kid from Gordon, Nebraska (pop. 1,500) who gets ribbed for resembling Zac Efron, has put up a mammoth 90 points on a bull called Smokestack to take the lead for the $100,000 check to be awarded Sunday afternoon.

Twisted Steel is scheduled for the last section in Round 1. Cowboy has moved down to the bucking chutes, standing a few feet behind young Caden Bunch who is assigned to him. Bunch, a member of Cherokee Nation, with cheekbones that could double as a letter opener, won the PBR season opener in Tucson. Since then, the 20-year-old has been shut out – bucked off nine straight bulls. Now he’s taking on a surly opponent who has dispatched 93% of riders who have tried him.

Twisted Steel is a hazard even before the 8-seconds of mayhem that is a bull ride. He’s likely to throw the rider around in the coffin-shaped steel bucking chute before the play even begins. It’s hard to find an equivalent in another sport. Imagine an NFL player knocked out of action for six months when loosening up on the sidelines. That’s PBR.

Wearing a glove he’s coated with sticky resin, Bunch begins wrapping his hand in his bull rope. There’s no saddle or anything else to keep him fixed in place.

Bunch is taking too long for Twisted Steel’s liking. He jerks up, jamming the rider’s legs into the fence and knocking the rope from his hand. Bunch has to rewrap atop a ticking time bomb.

Finally, he nods his head to signal go time. The gate swings open. Twisted Steel busts out with the urgency of a death-row prison break. He’s known for a huge first jump. That knowledge is useless to Bunch, immediately out of sorts, and flung down in 2.46 seconds.

Cowboy is ready for the moment he’s thought a lot about. The camera shifts to him and arena announcer Matt West who asks for his reaction. The gauntlet comes down.

“Not very impressed…What do you guys think, MSG? You think I should give Twisted Steel a shot, get on him?”

The crowd roars.

An incredulous West wants to go over this again. Is Cowboy serious?

“I’m dead serious,” he says. “I’ve never said ‘No’ to a fight. I think I should give him hell.”

The crowd loves it. Social media blows up. Five days later, Dana White accepts the challenge on his Instagram. He’ll pay Cowboy $50,000 to attempt the bull, $100,000 if he makes the 8.

PBR CEO Sean Gleason then confirms it will all go down at PBR World Finals - Championship inside AT&T Stadium in Arlington, Texas on May 18.

Cowboy Cerrone vs. Dana White’s Twisted Steel in Cowboy Stadium during the biggest event in bull riding.

Cerrone says the check will go to his children’s camp charity.

P.T. Barnum smiles from above.

Getty Images, courtesy PBR

This wasn’t a whim. A decade earlier, Cowboy, now 40, floated to White the idea of getting on a bull. About that time, NFL star Chad Ochocinco did just that on Deja Blue, owned by Dodger legend Tommy Lasorda. Ocho lasted under dos. Nearly stomped, he would declare bull riders need to be the highest-paid athletes in sports.

The 6-time pro bowler, built like a titanium robot, was lucky not to be seriously hurt. White made it clear he wasn’t going to allow one of his most popular fighters who would headline nine UFC events to risk catastrophic injury.

Unable to ride, Cerrone took another path to get more involved in the sport. Through a program called Back Seat Buckers, he bought into a bull that he named “Don’t Tell Dana” – a tongue-in-cheek reference to his boss’s feelings about his bull riding dream.

Cowboy retired from the fighting game tied for second-most wins (23) and finishes (16) and has the third-most bouts ever in the promotion (38). The avid thrill seeker who had tried rock climbing and base jumping (a resulting stomach scar is nasty as what any bull rider can show in their locker room) could now scratch that bull riding itch.

“I started watching Twisted Steel buck at the PBR Teams Championship in Las Vegas, and I’m thinking, hell man, I’d love to get into this,” he said. “Fighting’s over for me, so why not go chase another dream. Dana’s bull makes sense. I’m gonna give him hell.”

During his career, Cowboy took more fights on short notice than anyone else. He has time to train for this bout.

He wants to pair up with Ross Coleman, coach of the Missouri Thunder in the PBR Teams league, at the team’s training facility in Texas. Not known to be a fighter, Coleman is a tough, stubborn, and fearless guy you’d want on your side in a bar fight. He also recorded 400 qualified rides in PBR.

Two-time PBR World Champion Jose Vitor Leme, a star soccer player in Brazil before coming to America and rewriting the bull riding history books, including the two highest scores in PBR history, is eager to help as well, getting his Austin Gamblers teammates involved.

Even with coaching and preparation, some who have dedicated their life to the sport remain skeptical.

“Cowboy Cerrone has as much of chance making 8 seconds on Twisted Steel as I do knocking out Conor McGregor,” said nine-time world champion Ty Murray.

Murray knows what it’s like for a world-class athlete to step outside his comfort zone into another lane. He appeared on “Dancing with the Stars” and took it seriously.

“I trained hard for three months, and I got to about one percent of the level of a professional dancer,” Murray said.

Murray trained so vigorously he had to eat a bucket of ice cream every day just to keep his weight.

“The difference here is what’s at stake. An accomplished, tough athlete can go try to be a NASCAR driver, and that’s dangerous. But he’s in control of the throttle and the brakes. Twisted Steel has the accelerator. And there ain’t no brakes. This is a whole other level of going to the edge of the cliff. I really wish him the very best, but I think he’s gonna find out that the name ‘Cowboy’ is a lot harder earned than he thought.”

Cowboy acknowledges the steep, treacherous challenge ahead against a bull who delights in his own toughness. This isn’t his first rodeo, as the lame joke goes. He has felt the rollercoaster drops of a real bucker. He has seen gnarly wrecks up close. He knows he’s putting his body on the line. He’s playing for keeps.

By the time Austin Richardson, an earnest 23-year-old Texan, lifted the Charging Bull Trophy above his head as the 2024 Madison Square Garden Champion, and PBR’s intrepid crew was gathering up the rented dirt to truck back to Jersey, Cowboy had seen Twisted Steel toss two top riders like rag dolls into a crossfire hurricane.

“I don’t know if you can train for a bull like this,” Cowboy said. “You either got it, or you don’t?”

Cowboy let the question hang in the air.

In five months, he’ll find out. Meantime, there will be practice bulls at Coleman’s ranch. Cowboy has never been much for watching tape of other fighters, but he’ll try to map Twisted Steel’s plans and tendencies.

“If I were going to the state fair and jumping on a bull, that’s a different story,” he said. “Everything right now is free talk. I know I’m about to get on the best in the world. Come May 18, yeah, I’m gonna be scared.”

Twisted Steel does have gentle eyes.

Problem is, everything else about him feels downright homicidal.