FORT WORTH, Texas – At the 2025 Unleash The Beast season-opener in Tucson, Arizona, Sage Kimzey made his intentions for the season plain.

“A World Championship is what all of us in this locker room are gunning after, and I’m no different,” Kimzey said. “If it doesn’t end in gold, it’ll be a disappointment, that’s for sure.”

The seven-time PRCA bull riding world champion knows a thing or two about how to win gold, and since that first night in Tucson, he’s steadily pursued that goal.

He placed 13^th overall in Tucson and followed that up with a 22^nd-place showing in Ontario, California.

Kimzey has done even better since the calendar flipped to December, finishing ninth in St. Louis before storming to second place last weekend in Wichita, Kansas.

He went 2-for-3 in Wichita and was less than half a second away from a perfect weekend, bucking off Big Choppa in 7.55 seconds in Round 1. But he struck fast on Championship Saturday, first riding Down Payment for 89 points in Round 2.

“Sage did everything he could on this bull right here, made a really good ride on Down Payment,” 2016 World Champion Cooper Davis said. “This bull’s got a little weird step around five seconds that gets a lot of guys on the ground. Sage was perfect right here.”

For Kimzey, who had been blanked in the later rounds the weekend prior in St. Louis, the ride was exactly what he needed.

“It was big, for sure,” he told Kate Harrison dirtside. “You need to capitalize on every good bull you get, and that was definitely a good one.”

In the championship round, he rode Nobody for a round-winning 91.75 points.

“That’s what you expect to see out of Sage Kimzey, especially in moments like this,” Davis said. “He’s after that gold buckle. He knows what he has to do. And man, this bull’s getting in the air, but you look at this ROB (rider over bull score) right here – 47.25 on a 44.5, and man, Sage Kimzey looked dialed in right there.”

Davis was referring to the rider over bull score, which looks at the difference between what the rider scores vs. what the bull scores in a qualified ride. Kimzey’s out on Nobody was 91.75 points – he scored 47.25 points while Nobody scored 44.5, which is a difference of 2.75 points. This means that Kimzey far outperformed his bovine counterpart, displaying his dominance.

Even more impressive, in his 89-point trip on Down Payment in Round 2, Kimzey scored 46 points while Down Payment scored 43. The 89 points were good enough to get Kimzey into the championship round on just one score—the three-point ROB was the difference between moving on and going home.

Simply put, Kimzey is on top of his game. He’s ranked No. 3 in the Unleash The Beast standings – higher than he’s been ranked in more than a year.

His ride on Nobody was also of particular note. It was the first qualified ride on the bull in nine trips at the UTB and PBR Canada levels. Stock contractor Gene Owen believes this bull will follow in the footsteps of his prized bovine—the 2024 YETI World Champion Bull Man Hater.

“I’m always looking for another one, and Darren Eno from Canada had called me about this bull,” Owen told Harrison in St. Louis. “I didn’t buy him right away, and a little while later, the Snyder family, they got ahold of me and wanted a bull, and I thought that was a good match. The videos I’d saw, I knew that he had a lot of potential. When Man Hater’s done, hopefully he’ll be ready to step in and take his place.”

Right now, Nobody was no match for Kimzey, who’s ready to tackle the full UTB slate for the first time. Last season, in what was his rookie year, he competed in just 12 regular-season events after suffering an elbow injury and undergoing surgery in February.

Still, he won the 2024 PBR World Finals event title to finish the year ranked No. 7 in the world.

With a full, healthy season, the sky is the limit.

Kimzey will next be in action this weekend at the PBR Manchester in Manchester, New Hampshire, on Dec. 20-21. Action begins with Round 1 on Dec. 20 at 8 p.m. ET on RidePass on Pluto TV and the PBR’s YouTube channel.

Photo courtesy of Todd Brewer/Bull Stock Media