GREEN BAY – For the first time ever, the PBR Challenger Series circuit came to Green Bay at the Resch Center for a sold out crowd on Saturday, Sept. 13.
Professional bull rider and Southern California native Aaron Williams looked to hunt down his next win after a lifetime of riding bulls and developing a passion for rodeo.
“I actually grew up in a little small town called Norco (Northern Corona, Calif.). My parents took me and my little brother to the fair. They had bull riding and junior bull riding going on. I asked my parents if I could do it and they said, ‘sure.’ They took me down to the guy in charge and I asked him if I could get on the baby cows and he said, ‘You’re a little too small to get on baby cows but we can put you on some sheep.’ I got on at three years old and have been doing it ever since. Fast forward about 27 years now,” said Williams about his introduction to the sport.
Despite growing his passion for bull riding into a professional career, Williams said he spent plenty of his childhood dabbling in a variety of sports.
“I played all kinds of different sports from jiu jitsu and other combat sports. My two other brothers ended up going professional for motocross. I played baseball and football, tried my hand at hockey. I got to play all kinds of other sports but everything just always came back to rodeo and bull riding,” said Williams.
Williams said that he has always had an innate drive to be successful and bull riding and to find a way to come out victorious against such a strong and smart animal.
“To be completely honest, I couldn’t give a straight answer. There’s just this appeal to conquering what you’re not supposed to. As a human being, I just found that addicting and for lack of a better term it got in my blood and I just couldn’t let it go,” said Williams.
Even though bull riding has a reputation for being a dangerous and often unattainable career path, Williams said that if it is something you are truly passionate about, bull riding can be a fulfilling career.
“Bull riding took me through school. I owe everything to riding bulls. I met my wife when we were kids at junior rodeo. I got scholarships for college just because of riding bulls and competing in rodeo at the high school level and then the collegiate level and then went on to the professional level from there. It’s given me everything I have — my house, my ranch, my livestock, my family, everything. It’s easy to get after, but it’s just like everything else where it’s hard to keep your nose to the grindstone and make it happen,” said Williams.
“There’s avenues out there as far as junior rodeo for kids, there’s high school rodeo and there’s also different open levels of rodeo and bull riding all around the country where you can just go and get on something for practice. There are all kinds of ways to get into it and it’s not as closed off as people would think.”
According to Williams, the journey to making his passion for bull riding into a career has had its ups and downs, but he would not have been able to find success without his unwavering support system.
“It’s something that I always knew that I wanted to do. My two older brothers were professional motocross riders and live in Florida and have a string of barber shops now actually. There was always support from my parents for my two older brothers, myself, my younger brother for whatever we wanted to do.
Their only thing was that they would support us in whatever we wanted to do but we couldn’t quit. We had to see it all the way through to the end and if we are at the end and we don’t want to pick it back up then that’s alright but we had to give it our all to get there. That was huge in my life, knowing that if I start something I have to finish it. It doesn’t matter how hard or dangerous something might get,” said Williams. “Fast forward into college and I made up my mind and it was what I wanted to do. I had some things that happened in my education and in my professional career that weren’t in line with what I wanted to do, but such is life and at that point I was unsure if what I was going to get after for a profession. My wife and I were dating at the time and she told me, ‘You need to get after it and I’ll be here at the house. I’ll make sure everything is taken care of. If there’s anybody that can do it, it’s you.’ If it weren’t for the support system I had and the life lessons from my parents in our sports and extracurricular activities — it’s made all the difference for me.”
Rodeo is one of the few sports with a competitive relationship between the animals and the competitors. Williams said that while all bull riders have respect for the bulls, the end goal is always to find a way to beat them.
“I just like to beat ‘em. I like to get on the best bulls that are out there and beat ‘em. It comes back to that conquering nature if you will. There’s always the next best one and the one that everyone’s after and that they think is the cream of the crop. That’s my relationship with them,” said Williams. “I like to think that I’m a bull rider, so I’m supposed to ride everything that I get on. The only reason that I don’t ride a bull at times is because I do something I shouldn’t have done or didn’t do something that I should have. I don’t give them the mental win over me. The next time I come across them, it’s like I’ve been there once and they got their one win, and they don’t get another one. I beat them every time after that.”
Williams has a rank of 65 and 10.5 points.
Like most bull riders, Williams said he has a couple of bulls in mind that he would like to take down.
“I got a little bit of a list with some personal vendettas out there. There’s a bull out there that I haven’t been on yet, but I’d love to — Manhater. There’s another bull out there that I have been on and he’s real smart. He got me in a championship round. His name is Coolwhip. I’d really like to get him again.
There’s one more that a buddy of mine, Blake Sharp, owns named Legend and me and Legend had a match up at the 2023 World Finals and it went his way and not mine and that was a rough time for me, so I’d really like to get him back,” said Williams.
For the PBR circuit, riders are randomly assigned their bull through a pre-event draw, so Williams does not know when he will get the next opportunity to face any of these bulls.
The adrenaline rush and flashy aspects of bull riding are often the most obvious to spectators, but according to Williams, there is a lot that goes on behind the scenes that people don’t always realize.
“It’s hard on your family. I don’t work a 9-5 where I work Monday through Friday and clock in. I ride bulls for a living. I’m typically gone Thursday through Sunday. We’re not guaranteed pay for our job. We’ve got to pay our way to get to work. We’ve got to pay our entry fee and we’ve got to ride our bulls and hope that we’ve got enough bull underneath us to win. If you don’t win, you’re not paying the bills,” said Williams. “There’s a lot that people don’t see with that side of it and as far as the strain that it puts on home life. It takes a special person to be with a man like us and have a family. I thank God every day for the woman he blessed me with and the beautiful son we just had. It’s strenuous. It’s no cakewalk, but if you put your nose to the grindstone you can make it happen. If you sit around and wait for it to happen, it’ll pass you by.”
According to Williams, he is proud to have accomplished as much as he has so far and no matter how much longer his career is, he is just proud to have been able to prove that hard work pays off.
“I’ve been very fortunate to have accomplished a lot in my career to this point. I think that the next step for me is to ride everything that I get on everywhere I go and show my son that just because it’s hard mentally and physically doesn’t mean that you can’t do it and make it a success. That’s my new goal is just to show my son that you can make anything a success as long as you want to,” said Williams.
For those interested in attending the next PBR event at the Resch Center, Williams said that the event will provide more excitement than you could imagine.
“It is unlike any professional sporting event that you’ve ever been to. It is edge of your seat action packed from start to finish. If you could take the biggest rock concert you’ve ever seen and mix it with every professional sport you’ve ever seen, that’s what you’re in for. You should probably just go ahead and buy your tickets for next year now because after this inaugural year, it’s going to sell out and you’re not going to be able to get one,” said Williams.
Williams took sixth with a score of 71.5 for 21 points after being the first rider of the night — and the first to hit an 8 second ride.
Alex Junior de Silva led the event with a score of 85.5 for 108 points.
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