The moment was made even sweeter by an unexpected brush with another Texas sports star.

As Dias jumped back onto the chutes after the ride, still buzzing from the whistle, he slapped hands with Dak Prescott. At the time, Dias had no idea it was Prescott. He was simply happy, high-fiving anyone within reach after another eight-second job well done.

He found out afterward that the particularly enthusiastic hand he had just met belonged to the Dallas Cowboys quarterback.

Prescott, who Dias confirmed with a laugh, has a pretty strong high five.

Then again, Dias had just reached 100 career qualified rides while competing without a functioning ACL, so he probably still had the edge in the toughness department. But bull riding always challenges you and qualified number 102 made him work for it.

When the 2026 PBR Team Series opened at Bulls & Beats, Dias resumed his familiar role as the Kansas City Outlaws' closer — the fifth man in the lineup, the rider expected to handle whatever situation remains when the game reaches its final frame.

His first opportunity looked promising.

Dias tied his hand in for a rematch on Snuggles and settled into the middle before the out ended in the 7-second neighborhood. A re-ride gave him another chance, this time aboard The Player.

It was the kind of bull everyone believed he could ride.

The problem came before the gate ever opened.

With time disappearing on the chute clock, Dias wanted to unwrap and reset his hand. There was not enough time. He nodded without getting the rewrap he wanted, and less than five seconds later the consequence showed itself.

His hand popped free at 4.84 seconds.

The rider who had just reached 100 qualified rides on bull riding's biggest individual stage opened the Teams season 0-for-2.

A day later, the Outlaws put the ball back in their closer's hands.

This time, Dias did not throw the metaphorical interception.

On Sunday, July 12, against the defending PBR Teams Champion Carolina Cowboys, Dias climbed over the bucking chute and settled onto XIT Knock Out.

Kansas City already had one score on the board. One more would put the Cowboys over the threshold of no return.

Dias wrapped his rope. Set his feet. Slid forward.

Then the gate cracked.

Eight seconds later, Kansas City's closer had his first qualified ride of the 2026 Teams season and the 102nd of his PBR career.

The score gave the Outlaws their second conversion of the game and helped finish a 175.05-0 shutout of Carolina, securing Kansas City's first victory of the season against the reigning 2025 champions.

For Dias, it was another entry in a career increasingly defined not only by how often he rides, but by when he does it — punctuated, as so many of his biggest moments are, by his signature double-wave celebration to the crowd.

Even pressure has rarely seemed to alter Dias.

Pain hasn’t done much to slow him down, either.

Dias competed through the 2026 PBR World Finals without an ACL, yet continued putting scores on the board against the best bulls in the sport. His explanation for how he has remained competitive has little to do with braces, ropes or equipment.

It starts with his head.

“What is working now is my mindset,” Dias said. “When you have the right mindset, when your mind is good, you’re focused, you can ride with no rope, and you’re gonna ride your bull.

“This season was a season of learning. I learned a lot, and now I can see that my mind is in the right place, and I’m very focused.”

That mindset has been tested plenty.

Dias has tinkered with his equipment. He changed bull ropes during the season. He experimented with riding without an elbow brace. Then, when it came down to World Finals he was still trying to find consistency while competing on a compromised knee.

Eventually, he stopped searching for the solution in his gear.

The answer, he decided, was between his ears.

It is an approach reinforced by former PBR World Champion Guilherme Marchi, one of the veteran voices Dias has turned to when the sport has become difficult.

“He always tells me, ‘Keep strong. Keep going,’” Dias said. “Cowboy life is hard. You have highs and lows. Sometimes you’re in your best game, sometimes you’re at your lowest, but the only thing we need to do is keep going, keep riding, keep rolling.”

Cowboy life is hard. Dias has proven time and again that he might be harder.

Long before he became a world champion, he was a kid growing up on a ranch in Guzolândia, São Paulo, Brazil, watching Lane Frost.

Dias studied Frost's rides and his mannerisms, fascinated by the cowboy whose career had ended before Dias was born but whose influence had stretched thousands of miles into rural Brazil.

Even before Dias could speak English, he knew the words to Willie Nelson's “My Heroes Have Always Been Cowboys.”

His ambitions were just as specific.

Win the PBR Brazil Championship.

Then go ride against the best in the world.

The first came in 2022.

Dias captured the PBR Brazil Championship and soon headed to the United States, where the adjustment from promising Brazilian talent to one of the sport's elite happened remarkably fast.

By 2024, Dias had not simply reached the top level. He had taken it over.

Across his historic championship campaign, Dias went 41-for-76, covering 53% of his bulls while collecting 13 round wins and eight 90-point rides.

He became just the second rider in PBR history to win the World Championship and Rookie of the Year in the same season.

But the statistics only tell part of why that season became part of PBR lore.

During the 2024 PBR World Finals, Dias climbed aboard Norse God and left the arena on a backboard.

The wreck knocked him unconscious. He was hospitalized. His championship run suddenly seemed in jeopardy with the biggest moments of his rookie season still ahead.

One week later, he was back.

Dias returned visibly battered, wearing the chaps of the cowboy he had idolized since childhood.

Lane Frost's chaps.

Then he rode for 90 points and clinched the PBR World Championship.

The image became one of the defining scenes of the season: a Brazilian cowboy who had grown up studying Frost now wearing his hero's chaps while winning a gold buckle of his own.

The next chapter came with Kansas City.

Later in 2024, Dias became the engine of an Outlaws lineup that surged to the PBR Teams regular-season championship.

Then came Fort Worth.

Dias climbed aboard the late and legendary Man Hater and produced one of the most violent, electric eight seconds the league had seen.

The result was 98.25 points.

It remains the highest-scored ride in PBR Teams history and the second-highest score ever recorded in PBR competition.

For most riders, a world title and a score approaching perfection would represent the defining stretch of a career.

For Dias, another fight was already coming.

Later that year, he fractured his femur — the kind of pain that tests even the toughest cowboys, and one Dias handled with the same grit that has defined his career.

The injury pulled him out of competition and sent him into months of rehabilitation, replacing bucking chutes and arenas with the slower work of trying to rebuild a leg strong enough to ride bulls again.

His return finally came at Oklahoma Wildcatter Days in 2025.

Now, one year later, Dias heads back to Oklahoma City for the same event July 31-Aug. 2, when Wildcatter Days will mark the first three-day weekend of the 2026 PBR Teams season.

Last year there was no easing back into it.

In his first event after the injury, Dias climbed aboard Dynamite, reached the whistle and earned 87.75 points to seal a Kansas City victory.

Ride. Get hurt. Rehabilitate. Return.

Then do it again.

That cycle is part of what makes 100 — and now 102 — more significant than a simple career count.

Dias has reached the number despite being knocked unconscious at a World Finals, breaking his femur, his back, enduring months of rehab and competing without an ACL.

Through each interruption, his answer has largely stayed the same.

Keep going.

His faith is at the center of it.

“I’m very grateful that I’m just here because God wants me here,” Dias said. “He’s been with me, helping me, and I think He wants me to be here. So that’s why I’m here today, doing what I love and pursuing my dream and my gift.”

The career those beliefs have helped build now includes a PBR Brazil Championship, a PBR World Championship, Rookie of the Year honors, a Teams regular-season championship, the highest-scored ride in Teams history, 13 round wins during his world-title season, eight 90-point rides during that same campaign and more than 100 qualified rides at the sport's highest level.

Away from the dirt, the life is much quieter.

Dias and his wife, Juliana, return home to their ranch, where they are raising their young daughter and cattle. He fishes. He barbecues. He spends as much time outdoors as he can.

He drives a pickup.

Johnny Cash plays through the speakers.

His Bible stays close.

His favorite movie remains “8 Seconds.”

Some pieces of the kid from Guzolândia have not changed at all.

He still loves the cowboy who made him want this life in the first place.

The difference is that Dias no longer has to imagine what it might be like to ride among the names he once studied.

He is building a résumé of his own.

One hundred arrived on Elmo beneath the lights of the World Finals.

No. 102 came in an Outlaws jersey, one day after two opportunities slipped away, with the defending champions waiting across the arena and Kansas City searching for its first win.

Dias was not counting either one.

He just keeps riding.