Celebrity Bull Riding II

I don't as a normal rule get sucked into commercial TV shows. If I watch commercial TV, it's usually out of the spirit of self-mortification. I enjoy being insulted by the shows and manipulated by the commercials and I flagellate myself like some strange Crusader knight dragging myself on bloody knees toward Jerusalem.

But I did get sucked into Ty Murray's Celebrity Bull Riding Challenge in a pretty big way. It's a good thing it wrapped up last night, except for the marathon reshowing of all the episodes on Sunday, or I'd have gotten nothing accomplished. Oh, wait, I did get nothing accomplished. Never mind.

Most of the celebrities in the show turned out to be pretty decent guys - Rocket Ismail, Francisco Quinn, "Nitro" Dan and I apologize for forgetting the remainder of his name. Even the guys I wouldn't normally see myself having a beer with, like Josh Haynes, turned out to be honorable men, if not exactly the sorts of personalities I like to associate with. In fact, I can only think of one guy on the show that disgraced himself, that being the ever-lovin' Leif Garrett.

The "story arc" is that Ty Murray, the world seven-time champion all-around rodeo cowboy, would teach these various celebrities how to ride bulls over the span of about a week, and they would go to ride fairly serious bulls at a PBR (Professional Bull Riding) event in Nashville. The celebrities included:

Vanilla Ice (rapper)
Leif Garrett (pop star)
Stephen Baldwin (actor and junior member of the bold, sprawling Baldwin clan)
Jonny Fairplay (reality TV "star")
Josh Haynes (UFC fighter and monolith)
Dan Clark (American Gladiator dude)
Kenny Bartram (motocross racer and X-Games freestyle motocross dude)
Francesco Quinn (actor and Famous Son)
"Rocket" Ismail (former NFL star and one of the fastest men to play in the NFL)

So out of this list, with all these tough guys like Quinn and Haynes and Clark and Ismail, who do you think was the only guy to ride his bull for eight seconds in Nashville? The tough guys like Haynes and Nitro? The guys with tons of natural athleticism like Ismail and Bartram?

No, the smallest and least physical of the whole bunch, Jonny Fairplay. Amazing!

Leif Garrett quit after the first day. Stephen Baldwin broke something in his shoulder. Francesco Quinn got stomped and broke three ribs in his back. So six of them went to Nashville and it was Jonny Fairplay that got to the horn.

To be fair (har har) it must be admitted that Jonny Fairplay's bull was relatively modest. I could have ridden it, and I'm not joking - at most, it ran around like a mildly spooked horse and never really bucked. But - and this is a big but - it's a standard rule in bull riding that you can't control the bull you drew, and you can't control the bull's performance day to day. So you ride what you drew, and that's where the griping stops. Jonny Fairplay's bull was pretty easy, but that doesn't matter. In the end, he rode for eight seconds and nobody else did. Amazing.

But I salute them all. And it was good TV for a change!