For one weekend only, Brew City becomes a cow town

On most weekends, the Milwaukee Bucks take over the floor at Fiserv Forum. But this weekend, bucks will be swapped out with bulls.

Forty of some of the top professional bull riders in the world will go head-to-head against the sport’s top bulls for the Professional Bull Riders “Unleash The Beast” tour. Robert Simpson, the senior vice president of the PBR, called the event a “rock concert with bull riding.”

The setup for the event, which will be broadcast on national television, includes 750 tons — 1.5 million pounds — of dirt. A maze of steel paneling, totaling the length of six football fields, will be constructed in the arena to create the pens for the animals and safe passage for the cowboys. 

The bull riders are coming from all over the world, including from Mexico, Brazil, Canada and Australia, as well as from around the United States. They’ll take on the sport’s “rankest bovine athletes.”

“It’s a 150-pound cowboy against a 2,000-pound bull,” Simpson said. “All, of course, hand selected, top of the line, the best in their profession, from the rider perspective, and the bull perspective.” 

Conner Halverson, a Nebraska native, has been competing in the tour for four years — since he was 18-years-old. 

“Bull riding is always something I wanted to do, so I just kept with it,” Halverson said. “It’s one of those sports where if you don’t like it with all you got, then you’re not going to last very long.” 

The “Unleash The Beast” tour isn’t like a traditional rodeo with other events. At PBR events, bull riding is the only focus. 

“Then it’s man versus beast,” Simpson said. “They open the chute, bull comes out, bucks like you’ve never seen before in your life and the riders ride them and we move on.” 

Halverson said it’s impossible to know what’s going to happen when the gate opens.

“They’re animals, they have a mind of their own and anything can happen once that chute opens,” he said. “Once the gate opens, it’s all muscle reaction.”

How it works

Every rider gets eight seconds to hold on for dear life. There are four judges watching the action — two judge the bulls and two judge the riders. The judges score the ride from 1-25 and the two scores are combined for a total score out of 50. 

The rider only scores points if he successfully rides the bull for eight seconds. Halverson said the judges look for the rider’s position and body control on the bull, and how dominant the rider is.

The bull is always given a score. A spokesperson for the event said 81 bulls will be in the arena in Milwaukee. Some of the names of bulls on the tour range from “Mad Max” to “Mr. Twister” to “Spin Cycle.” 

Round one is on Saturday and round two will be held Sunday. Every rider will ride a bull in one of those rounds, but after the second round is complete, the 12 riders with the highest scores advance to the championship round. 

Milwaukee is the 15th stop on the 23-city tour. It’s held in a different city each weekend, with the world championship held in Texas in May, with riders getting a chance to win a $1 million bonus. 

Last year, Kaique Pacheco won Milwaukee’s event. At the end of the season, he finished third in the world. Joao Ricardo Vieira won the Milwaukee event in 2022, also finishing number three in the world title race that year. 

The event is being held in Milwaukee for the third year in a row. Around 10 semi-trucks will bring the equipment in and it takes around 100 people to set up the event and run it. 

Simpson encouraged anyone to check it out, even if they don’t know much about the sport. 

“Once they (fans) go, they experience that excitement, the edge of your seat, all of that stuff, they will come back,” Simpson said. “We get a fan to go — it could be a white collar family out in the suburbs, it could be a blue collar steel worker — it doesn’t matter because everybody has an in at our events.”