Bengals Legend Chad Ochocinco Wants Another Shot at Riding a PBR Bull

Last Thursday, the former Bengals star shared his recurring dream while interviewing 20-year-old PBR phenom John Crimber on his podcast, Nightcap. The world’s No. 1 bull rider, an avid WWE fan, stopped in Las Vegas to check out the preparations for WrestleMania 42 and appear on the podcast co-hosted by Ochocinco and Shannon Sharpe, who showed an impressive range of knowledge about PBR bulls.   

Not a minute into the interview, Ochocinco declared, “I want to ride bulls, still. I want to get back into it…showing a different, crazy side of my life where I’m willing to do or try anything.  And obviously I think bull riding is something I can get back into because of the adrenaline rush. It’s scary, the outcome, you don’t know what can happen.  I like situations that are unpredictable. If I die, I die.”

“We can dang sure hook it up!” Crimber replied.

You expected him to add, “I’ll even hold your beer!”     

Most humans do something wildly reckless and dumb one time, file that scary memory away, and occasionally pull out the tale to impress old high school friends.

Not Ochocinco. Plotting his next bull, he wanted to know what it felt like to make that elusive 8 seconds.

“It’s an unexplainable feeling to me,” Crimber said. “I feel 10-foot tall and bulletproof when I’m hopping off one that I know, gosh, that’s the real deal there. You’re nervous, but it’s moments we dream of. That’s what I dreamed of ever since I was a little kid, being in those bright lights and riding that top-caliber bull. You’re nervous, but it’s like in slow motion. It’s crazy.”

Ochocinco claims to want to revisit the scene of the crime, crawl onto the back of the beast, and try for bulletproof status, when every shred of logic and good sense and the collective indisputable experience of every amateur who has tried to do what cowboys train years for portends another dirt sandwich.

Two years ago, retired UFC fighter Cowboy Cerrone planned to take on Dana White’s Twisted Steel at PBR World Finals. A few months before the event, while training on a relatively mild bull, Cerrone tore his bicep clean off the bone. The showdown was canceled.

White himself, now a bull owner, got on an ornery animal ten years ago while traveling the country searching for new MMA fighters as part of his reality show, Dana White: Lookin’ for a Fight. Outside of Houston, UFC’s boss wrapped in, nodded his head, and hung on for 3.07 seconds. He skidded across the dirt and came within inches of a serious stomping.

He called it “the fastest scariest, craziest, three seconds you’ll ever have in your life…That was the first time I felt legit fear. I was scared.”

Unlike Cerrone, Ochocinco never got on practice bulls, but he knows what he’s in for. In 2011, fascinated with bull riding, he talked his way into taking on Deja Blue, co-owned by former Los Angeles Dodgers Manager Tommy Lasorda – a boisterous presence at PBR events who’d burst into the riders’ locker room to give colorful pep talks.

PBR set up the stunt for a break in the action in Duluth, Ga. Ochocinco would be riding for a new Ford pickup truck.

He’d need to make 8 seconds. Ocho, an elite athlete and six-time Pro Bowler, didn’t last dos.

Ochocinco said the experience was “1.5 seconds of humbling glory…scary as hell but a cool adrenaline rush." He joked that the bull “didn’t have the decency to apologize after I fell.”

He wouldn’t be driving home in a shiny new F-150. But PBR wrote him a $10,000 consolation check, which he donated to charity. 

“We struggled to get highlights on SportsCenter, but that one didn’t struggle,” said Ty Murray, a PBR co-founder and nine-time world champion who was drafted to train Ochocinco. 

Murray uses the term “training” lightly. He only had one day with the football star – lots of talking and a few reps on a mechanical bucking device.

“That’s like working with me a day and then I’m going to play an NFL game,” Murray said.

Murray sized up Ochocinco as a fine physical specimen. At 6 feet 1 and 192 pounds, he was tall for a bull rider. As a football player, he had extraordinary body control. He could accelerate deceptively, sell fakes, change direction sharply and create separation. Deja Blue might as well have been Ocho as a bull, times 1,000.

“He took it seriously but not understanding a lifetime of work and learning had to go into it,” Murray said. 

As instant instructor, the first thing Murray told Ochocinco was “your chances are less than zero.” 

It wasn’t to be a smart ass.

“It’s just that you don’t go into something that takes a lifetime and everything you’ve got and have instant success,” Murray said. “I was working on this since I’m 2 years old. I tried to set up the reality of what he was stepping into. The situation was duck-out-of-water bad.”

Murray talked through the basics. Sit up straight. When the bull goes forward, you have to go forward. Bull riding is not about brute strength – it’s counter movement. And it’s definitely not about just holding on. There’s rhythm, a dance, and the more Murray talked, the more he worried about what might happen to this elite athlete with a set of brass ones who he genuinely liked.

“I was trying to give him enough information so he wouldn’t get killed,” Murray said.

Lasorda, the bull’s owner, would regularly attend PBR events in Anaheim and Las Vegas to watch his prized animal athlete. He’d marvel at the combination of guts and skills required to ride a top bull.

“I can teach a bull rider to play baseball,” he once said. “I can’t teach a baseball player to be a bull rider.”

Try to say the same for star football players, but don’t expect Chad Ochocinco to listen.

John Crimber stands ready to help. This time, Ochocinco needs to learn the fundamentals. Start with easy bulls. Kindergarten level. Get the feel. Make the 8. Slowly move up in bull caliber until they get rank. Crimber’s dad, Paulo, a pioneering Brazilian rider who qualified for PBR World Finals 10 times and now coaches his son on the Florida Freedom in the Teams league, is already informally sorting out a progressive bull rotation.

Ochocinco remains fearless. He initially wanted Bushwacker, the famous formidable bull unridden for 42 outs until the dragonslayer, J.B. Mauney, conquered him on his ninth try. Ochocinco told Crimber he wants similar stock – the best of the best. 

That could be podcast schtick. Or turn out to be a must-see social moment from an early leader in that space.

“What Chad did in Georgia was other-level brave,” Murray said. “When he got to the arena, there was a shock seeing the bulls and rides up close. I think he realized what he got himself into was way more serious than what he fantasized about while watching TV. He had signed up for the impossible.”

Murray appreciates the buzz this stunt will again create for the sport he loves, shining a light on an athletic feat up there with hitting a 95-mile an hour slider. But he doesn’t see how the endeavor gets any less ludicrous, any less dangerous, any more attainable, especially 15 years after a one-and-a-half second out that nearly ended in calamity.

It feels like the definition of insanity.