John Crimber's entire life can be traced through a timeline of gold buckles.
They mark the wins, the milestones and the moments that moved him from a kid who only wanted to ride bulls to a PBR World Champion.
But the gold ovals around his waist say more than where he has been.
They say who he was when he got there.
One reminds him where he came from.
The other proves how far he has come.
When Crimber climbs into the bucking chutes, the reigning PBR World Champion still wears his 2021 Texas High School Rodeo Association State Champion bull riding buckle, its large Texas emblem sitting at the center of the gold oval. It belongs to a version of Crimber whose dream was much simpler than everything that has followed.
“All I wanted to be was a bull rider.”
So he keeps that buckle around his waist when it is time to ride — something he can look down at and remember who he was when he earned it, where his roots were planted and where they will always remain: in his family, his faith and the God he credits with guiding every step of his way.
When the riding is over, he changes it.
Now, he reaches for new gold.
Since Saturday night at Freedom Days presented by Breedlove Wound Care, Crimber has been walking around with his new 2026 PBR World Championship buckle around his waist. He has hardly taken it off.
The first night, he even slept with it.
And considering he waited nearly three months after becoming a World Champion to finally receive one he could actually wear, that seems fair.
The timing wasn't bad, either.
Crimber turned 21 shortly after the presentation, making the buckle the best birthday present he says he has ever received — and probably ever will.
The delayed delivery has a story of its own.
Before the 2026 PBR World Finals ever began, Crimber’s Montana Silversmiths championship buckle had already started its own journey.
As part of a partnership with the U.S. Space Force, PBR sent the buckle to the edge of space, where it traveled before returning to Earth. By the time Crimber completed his dramatic comeback in May and became the second-youngest World Champion in PBR history, the piece of gold meant to mark the achievement had already been somewhere no PBR World Championship buckle had gone before.
The trip up went fine.
The landing, however, went the way bull rides sometimes do — a little less graceful, with a crash at the end and only a few flames.
The buckle came back warped and bent after what PBR Teams Commissioner Sean Gleason later called “kind of a tough landing.”
Crimber's review of sending his first World Championship buckle into space was characteristically straightforward.
It was “pretty cool.”
But the damaged buckle has found a fitting permanent home.
Rather than sitting in Crimber's closet, the space-flown original now resides in the PBR Heroes & Legends Hall of Fame at the National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum in Oklahoma City, where it has become part of the sport's permanent history.
Crimber likes that part considerably more.
Visitors can now look at the piece, see the scars from its trip and connect it directly to the season in which a 20-year-old Crimber became a World Champion.
To him, it is “a history piece” — something PBR can point to years from now and say: this was the year John Crimber walked the stage as a World Champion.
There is another part of the display that has not escaped him.
Crimber grew up admiring the names whose artifacts now surround his own. Seeing something from his career displayed in the same museum as pieces connected to legends. Seeing his own piece displayed alongside artifacts tied to legends like Jim Sharp and Michael Gaffney is something Crimber still has not quite found the words for.
And even after its rough return from space, the buckle gave him one more reason to appreciate what it represented. Of everything that survived the landing, Crimber was especially impressed the buckle was still presentable at all — perhaps the best unintended advertisement Montana Silversmiths could ask for.
As Crimber put it, they make “the best buckles in the world.”
That first buckle may be bent, but the journey behind it makes sense alongside the championship it represents.
Crimber's path through the 2026 PBR World Finals wasn't exactly pristine, either.
He entered Fort Worth ranked No. 1 in the world, carrying the expectations that had followed him through a season in which he had looked almost untouchable.
Then he started the World Finals 0-for-5.
The pressure became visible.
After another buckoff during the opening weekend at Cowtown Coliseum, Crimber hurdled the bucking chutes and threw his helmet in frustration, accidentally clipping the hat from his father Paulo Crimber's head.
Paulo responded by pulling his son into his chest.
“I love you.”
A week later, the same kid who had looked crushed beneath the moment started digging his way back out.
Crimber covered July for 89.4 points in Round 6, ending a nine-bull buckoff streak, then rode Icky Thump for 84.95 points in Round 7.
On Championship Sunday, he went from surviving to winning.
A 91.35-point ride on What's Poppin earned him Round 8.
Then came Tigger.
While Paulo stood nearby with his head bowed in prayer, Crimber rode the bull for 92.9 points.
Another round win.
A World Championship.
At 20, Crimber became the second-youngest PBR World Champion in history.
“This world title, it's not just for myself,” Crimber said afterward. “This one's for my dad, too.”
Maybe the bend was fitting after all.
Because under enough pressure, even gold can warp without breaking.
So can champions.
And now Crimber has two World Championship buckles to carry that story forward: the warped original, scarred by the journey, and the new one shining around his waist. One can belong to the dream Paulo Crimber never got to finish. The other belongs to John — the proof that, this time, the Crimber name reached the top.
Nearly three months after the confetti, tears and Monster Energy shower inside Dickies Arena, Crimber finally got to see it Saturday night in Sunrise.
Crimber stood onstage in the middle of the Florida Freedom's homestand surrounded by members of the PBR family and several Miami Dolphins players, including defensive lineman Zach Sieler.
Because PBR sits under the TKO umbrella alongside WWE and UFC, Crimber's new buckle arrived inside something a little different.
For the first time, the PBR World Champion buckle was presented inside a WWE-style championship belt, with the buckle designed to pop out so Crimber could wear it.
Then commissioner Sean Gleason addressed the space-sized elephant in the room.
“I sent John Crimber's original World Champion buckle this year to the edge of space in a partnership with the U.S. Space Force,” Gleason told the crowd, “and it had kind of a tough landing.”
Hence the replacement.
“So we had a new one made,” Gleason continued. “On behalf of the PBR, on behalf of the Miami Dolphins, on behalf of all bull riding fans everywhere, congratulations, John. Sorry I ruined your first buckle, but we got you a new one.”
Crimber looked down at the gold.
“Holy smokes,” he said. “It's a lot shinier in person.”
Then he spotted the most important detail.
“I like my name on there too. It looks good.”
For a cowboy whose entire life had revolved around chasing that title, seeing his own name etched into the buckle landed differently.
So did the moment around him.
Crimber stood at center stage with members of the Miami Dolphins nearby, his Florida Freedom father and coach around him and thousands of fans roaring from the seats. For once, the rider known for keeping his balance on 2,000-pound bulls wasn't completely sure he could trust his own two feet.
They hardly felt like they were touching the ground.
Crimber was so overwhelmed by the moment that he was mostly trying to stay upright. In a place where the Atlantic sits only a few miles away, it felt as though one soft ocean breeze could have rolled through Sunrise and knocked the newly crowned World Champion over.
That was how light it all felt.
Surreal.
A lifetime of chasing one piece of gold was suddenly sitting in his hands.
Asked to describe the feeling, Crimber reached outside the Western world for the comparison.
“I feel like it's what Superman feels like when he puts on his cape,” Crimber said. “This right here just gave me a boost of confidence that I’ve never felt in my life.”
Then he immediately turned the moment back toward the faith that carried him through Fort Worth.
“This is really a dream come true,” Crimber said. “But this right here shows one thing and one thing only. It is how true our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ is, and how powerful He is.”
Holding the buckle brought the first weekend of the World Finals right back.
“I had a tough weekend the first weekend, and I didn't think I was going to pull through,” he said.
Through it, Crimber kept returning to one thought.
“There's no need to be afraid of an unknown future when we have a known God,” he said.
He trusted the plan and stopped trying to solve the entire championship at once.
“I was just gonna ride bull for bull,” Crimber said. “And at the end of the day, this is what happened right here. It's a dream come true.”
Receiving it in Sunrise added another layer.
Crimber was standing at the home event of the Florida Freedom, the team he helped lead to a regular-season championship, with one of his favorite crowds in PBR roaring in front of him.
“You guys are seriously the best crowd in PBR,” Crimber told them.
He has said repeatedly that Sunrise is his favorite stop because of the home-team energy.
“Whenever they're booing another team, they're cheering for us,” Crimber said. “That's what we like, and I feed off of that. Every single rider feeds off of that.”
On Saturday, the cheers were entirely for him.
“I'm very blessed to receive this World Champion buckle in front of this beautiful crowd,” he said.
Then Crimber raised it.
For a few seconds, the scene seemed to suspend around him — the Dolphins players, the Freedom faithful, the stage lights catching the gold and the name John Crimber staring back at him from the buckle he had spent his entire life trying to earn.
Nearly three months earlier, he had left Dickies Arena as a World Champion.
Now he finally had the buckle around his waist to prove it.
That matters in bull riding.
Buckles carry history.
Crimber's high school buckle is proof of the kid who started the journey. That is why he still wears it when he rides.
When the bull riding ends, he trades it for the newest chapter.
His World Championship buckle.
One goes into the chute with him as a reminder of where he came from.
The other comes out with him as proof of what he is capable of.
And somewhere in Oklahoma City sits a third piece of that story — technically the first version of the second buckle.
Bent but never broken.
A little battered from going somewhere no PBR World Championship buckle had gone before, but preserved in a museum alongside Crimber's heroes.
The high school buckle stays with the bull rider.
The space buckle belongs to history.
And the new one?
Crimber is keeping that one around his waist.
Even when he sleeps.
For his 21st birthday, Superman finally got his cape.
Crimber is “tickled to death” with the fit.