PUEBLO, Colo. – It has been over 28 years ago since Cody Lambert was standing inside the Cowtown Coliseum victorious at the first PBR event five miles from where he was standing inside Dickies Arena Tuesday morning in Fort Worth, Texas.
The PBR has certainly evolved and grown since Lambert and 19 other bull riders invested $1,000 inside a Scottsdale, Arizona, motel almost three decades ago to begin the now No. 1 bull riding organization in the world, and the PBR is ready for its next big step forward into the future.
The PBR announced Tuesday the PBR World Finals, will move to Fort Worth and Dickies Arena starting in 2022 as part of a comprehensive schedule restructure for its premier series.
“This is the center of the universe of Western Sports, and it is a great thing,” Lambert told PBR.com “Fort Worth since the early 1900s has been a central place for cowboys and in the past couple of years they have been doing even more. This is huge for Fort Worth, as well as for PBR.”
The new PBR Unleash The Beast regular season will span from January-May in 2022, culminating with a seven-day championship festival, spanning two weekends of bull riding and fan activities, in Fort Worth. the first three rounds of the 2022 PBR World Finals will be held May 13-15, with the final five rounds held from May 19-22.
The last time the PBR Finals was an 8-round competition over two weekends was 2009.
“It’s going to be a new and exciting way to look at it,” Lambert said of the season restructure beginning in 2022. “It puts us in the category with other major league sports that have an actual season instead of the whole year being a season.”
Dickies Arena, which features the second-largest, continuous 360-degree jumbotron screen in North America, just hosted its second PBR premier series event this past weekend since the state-of-the-art, venue opened during the 2019 PBR World Finals.
Texas welcomed the PBR World Finals to town last year when the league had to move its championships to AT&T Stadium in Arlington amidst the COVID-19 pandemic.
It was the first time in PBR history since the inaugural World Finals in 1994 that Las Vegas did not host the season-culminating event.
The PBR will be returning to Vegas and T-Mobile Arena in two months for the 2021 PBR World Finals (Nov. 3-7) before beginning its new era in Fort Worth next season.
“Texas is all about rodeo and bull riding, and it always has been,” Lambert said. “They proved that in a big way last year with the PBR Finals and the NFR being able to continue and go on because Texas was willing and able.”
Two-time World Champion Justin McBride attended the press conference Monday with Lambert, as did PBR riders Cooper Davis, Ezekiel Mitchell, Austin Richardson and Mason Taylor.
McBride echoed Lambert’s sentiments.
“PBR fans and riders understand the great cowboys that have performed here,” McBride said of Fort Worth. “The great bull riders that have been here before. I promise you they want to be a part of that history. It is really exciting for me to see through COVID last year, and how we ended up having a Finals in Texas. With everything with COVID and 2020 and the way Texas, Arlington and Fort Worth – that community – embraced having the PBR Finals and pulled it off. They did it for the National Finals Rodeo too. That showed you this would be a pretty great place to be.
“Nobody does big things better than Texas, and when you talk about Texas, there is no city better than Fort Worth.”
Davis has had plenty of success in Las Vegas, winning the PBR World Finals six years ago as a rookie during the PBR’s last Finals at the Thomas & Mack Center, and he then won the 2016 World Championship when the PBR visited T-Mobile Arena for the first time.
The Jasper, Texas, native said he is looking forward to helping build a new legacy of nostalgia in Fort Worth for future bull riders to aspire for.
“Yeah, for sure, because before there was Vegas, there was (the NFR in) Oklahoma City, and those guys had to get used to something different,” Davis said. “Now (Vegas) is the new norm. So I think Fort Worth, after a few years, will be the new norm for everybody and what they look forward to.
“And Fort Worth is historical in its own right as far as being a cowboy town. So it’ll be new, it’ll be different, and everybody will grow to like it just as much as they did Vegas.”
McBride and Lambert both agree.
“There is going to be guys growing up and dreaming about riding in Dickies Arena someday, and that is really cool to me,” Lambert said.
“Somewhere in the world right now there is a kid that is dreaming about being the best bull rider in the world and from here on out they are going to come to Fort Worth for that dream to become a reality,” McBride said. “That is what the PBR Finals is. It is where you find out who the very best bull rider in the world is.”
Follow Justin Felisko on Twitter @jfelisko
Photo courtesy of Click Thompson