Читать книгу Spurred West - Ian Neligh - Страница 9

CHAPTER 2

THE BULLFIGHTER

Spending more time in the air than on the ground, the bull is a spinning two-thousand-pound nightmare of hooves and horns. The rider hangs onto the back with one hand to what is essentially a homicidal centrifuge. The state fairgrounds in Pueblo, Colorado, the packed and roaring stadium, the blaring music, fellow cowboys—everything is a blur of bucking insanity. Then it happens: the whiplashing rollercoaster ends and the rider is flung loose, legs kicking, to drift through space above the rodeo grounds and away from the bull, his inelegant feet going one way with arms pinwheeling in another. The dusty rodeo grounds come up fast to make his less-than-friendly acquaintance with a bone-jarring thud and a cloud of dust. Knocked a little senseless, the cowboy scrambles to his feet, boots working hard to make purchase in the fine dirt, as he tries to make sense of where he is and how he can get out of the arena. He knows that he’s in danger. Through that disorientating fog comes the bull charging straight at him. They bred the bull for its aggression and murderous intent—and this is its chance for a little payback.

Thirty-two-year-old Wacey Munsell seemingly comes out of nowhere, stepping in front of the bull. Wearing clown makeup and baggy clothes, Munsell instantly attracts its attention, giving the cowboy time to run for the fence. Sometimes after a ride, a bull will walk back to the open pen, knowing its job is done; but sometimes it’s looking for blood. This one decides not to end the night on an easy note. The giant animal goes for Munsell, who moves to the side and toward the bull, putting it off its target. The bull wheels around and charges again, and Munsell avoids being gored by staying just a step or two ahead. He and another bullfighter try to steer the bull back to its pen using their bodies and the bull’s massive momentum against itself. There’s no Spanish bullfighting cape, nothing to hurt or further antagonize the bull; just its natural aggression and the deft movements of the bullfighters. It works 99 percent of the time, but this isn’t one of those times. The bullfighters decide discretion is the better part of valor and run for the fence. The bull still has its eyes on Munsell and is just feet—then inches—behind him as he moves towards the fence. He reaches it and clambers up as fast as his boots will allow him. Denied, the bull turns in frustration and leaves the arena. Munsell climbs back down. While he saved the bull rider and himself, it’s not a performance he is happy with.

“I don’t like doing that because that just means the bull might have bested me in some way,” Munsell later tells me. “And the second thing is the fence is never your friend. That fence doesn’t give—and that bull’s head is much harder than any bone in your body, so something is going to give between the bull’s head and the fence, and it is generally you.”

There’s also a professional pride in not being chased out of the arena. After all, Munsell is one of the top ten bullfighters in the United States.

“I never want to get run up a fence. It is just something in me that doesn’t want to be beat like that,” Munsell says. “Even though I’m not competing—I’m competing against the animal and I just never want the bull to leave the arena the winner.”

The Birth of the Rodeo Clown

Rodeo is an essential part of Munsell’s life and his family’s going back three generations. The bullfighter lives in Ulysses, Kansas, where he grew up watching his father, Doug Munsell, work as a rodeo clown.

“My mom and dad joke around that pretty much the day they had me, they strapped me in a car seat and we went rodeoing,” Munsell says. “It was what we were good at.”

He also recalls being involved in his father’s rodeo clown comedy acts from a very early age. The first rodeo he remembers taking part in was when he was four years old in White Deer, Texas, where his father worked as a bullfighter. Munsell tells me that only in the last twenty or thirty years has there been a significant difference between a bullfighter and the more traditional “rodeo clown.” Today a rodeo clown is primarily there to entertain the audience, whereas a bullfighter’s job is strictly to save bull riding contestants—even though they’re often both dressed like clowns.

In the early days of rodeo, the two jobs were one. The concept of a rodeo clown came about in the early 1900s when rodeo producers were looking for some way to fill the time between competitions and essentially “asked one guy to go out and tell jokes.”

“Because back then rodeos lasted hours on end, so they needed something to go in there and fill the time, so they told some guy to … go be funny,” Munsell says. Before long, the exciting and incredibly dangerous sport of bull riding was incorporated into rodeos.

“Some of them were kinda mean, so they would tell that guy, ‘Go in there and distract that steer or that bull,’” Munsell says. “So the clown transitioned into a lifesaver, so forever the two were always intermixed—you were funny and you fought bulls. But here in the last twenty years they’ve expanded, and one guy does one and I do the other.”

When Munsell’s father was in the business, he was considered a rodeo clown—even though the most important aspect of his job was to save lives.

“A clown had to be funny and tell the jokes and do the comedy acts and also had to fight bulls. My dad had done a lot of that,” Munsell says. “Most rodeo bulls are bred for their tenacity and aggression because it makes for a cooler show. It wouldn’t be exciting if the bull didn’t chase somebody, buck the guy off, and walk out the gate; that’s not very exciting.”

Munsell grew up around cattle and cowboys and often watched his father’s acts from the fence, yelling advice. Despite the obvious danger, Munsell never got nervous about his father’s numerous close calls. His father, after all, was a professional.

“I was probably less excited than a lot of people just because I’d been to so many at such a young age, so it was pretty second nature,” Munsell says. “I didn’t get too wrapped up if a bull got a hold of him or something. And I’d go up there and tell him, ‘Oh man, you could’ve done this or that to avoid that.’”

Munsell was thirteen years old when his father decided to take him to the Rex Dunn’s Bullfighting School, named for the famous bullfighter. The transition from standing on the sidelines to being chased by bulls happened almost immediately.

“He took me down there to see if I wanted to do that or not. So we went down there and were fighting full-blooded Mexican fighting bulls the first day,” Munsell says. Admittedly, while the bulls weren’t fully grown, they were fast, mean, and awfully aggressive.

“They didn’t bump me around a lot down there and I enjoyed it, and that’s probably when I decided that this is probably what’s best for me,” Munsell says.

In high school and college he went on to try his own hand at bull riding. “The adrenaline running through you is second to none,” Munsell says, thinking back to that time. “On the back of a bull it is easy enough to ride one that is bucking straight away, but when one is spinning and turning back, that adds to the higher degree of difficulty. Man, it is maybe sort of like a controlled car wreck.” But as much as he enjoyed it, he found it wasn’t for him.

“I’d always known I’d be involved in rodeo in some facet. I just didn’t know what,” Munsell says. “I was capable of riding bulls fairly decent but I’d hit a rough patch and was, at that time, getting more bullfighting jobs in high school.” And that’s what he’s done full time ever since.

Down to a Science

There are countless videos on the internet of Munsell being thrown by a bull, stomped on, trampled, kicked, and flung by a pair of horns high into the air. Like a rag doll, the bullfighter has been whipped all over the stadium and often in front of a cheering crowd. One video shows a frenzied bull’s back legs landing on Munsell’s back, slamming him flat to the ground. You can’t help but cringe when seeing it happen, knowing it’s like someone dropping a motorcycle on him.

Bullfighters hurry into position to help a rodeo contestant thrown from a bull during the Professional Bull Riders world finals in Las Vegas, Nevada in 2017. (U.S. Customs and Border Protection photo by Bob Bushell)

“Well, it certainly takes a special person to do the job,” Munsell remarks about the danger. “You’re purposely running in front of an animal that’s out to kill you.”

For Munsell, part of the thrill is about being able to control an animal that’s fifteen times his size without touching it. But more importantly, he says it is about being in the right place at the right time to help the bull rider in danger.

“When you pull a guy out of a bad jam and he tells you thanks, that’s super gratifying,” Munsell says. “You see a lot of these kids and they don’t get up and move as quick as they should, which makes my job a little harder than it should be.”

Munsell makes it a point to tell the bull riding competitors to help him out and move as soon as they hit the dirt. The sooner they start moving away from the bull, the easier it becomes for him to control the animal safely away. “If you’re getting up and moving, it makes my job a heck of a lot easier than if you’re lying around pouting,” Munsell says.

During the actual bull riding competition, the bullfighters are careful to keep their distance from the animal, about ten to fifteen feet away, to avoid negatively impacting someone’s ride. “A spinning bull is always going to get you more points, so we never want to draw the attention of the bull to us while he’s spinning,” he says. At the same time the bullfighters have to be ready to launch themselves forward in the blink of an eye. Munsell admits, “It’s a very fine line to keep your distance far enough away to let the bull buck and do its thing and not distract him, but a close enough distance where we can get in the middle of a situation as quick as we can.”

Sprinting across an arena toward a charging bull, instead of away, seems a little counter-intuitive. Every fiber of his being that cares about his own safety must be screaming to turn and run the other way. “It is completely backwards,” Munsell agrees.

The art and science of bullfighting has evolved over the past fifteen years. Bullfighters endlessly view videos of their performance, critiquing their game like NFL players.

“So you train yourself to look for certain things that the rider is doing that may indicate coming off the bull,” he says. “I understand how cattle move—and good cow sense, I think, can make a good bullfighter great.”

And of course while there are competitions for bull riders, there are also competitions for bullfighters. In that arena, Munsell has won two world championships and two national championships. He describes the contests as being a big, dangerous game of tag between him and the bull, with the bull being judged essentially on its aggression and tenacity—or basically its will to kill the bullfighter.

“I’m being judged on how close I can get to the animal and executing certain moves, and getting awarded for how close I’m getting and how well I pull off the maneuvers around that bull,” Munsell says. The bullfighter cannot touch the bull and must use its own inertia against it.

“A lot of bulls are trained, and they know when they’ve done their job and they know when to leave,” he says. But some bulls learn and remember moves used by bullfighters, and can use that to surprise the next one they find themselves up against.

A Dog-Eat-Dog Industry

For Munsell, fighting bulls is a full-time job that starts in January and runs most of the year. “It’s year-round, [and] there’s a lot more indoor venues than people would think. If you’ve got a nice barn, we can have a rodeo,” Munsell says.

Things are changing in America. The Western and rural lifestyle is in a constant state of decline, but the number of rodeos held every year are actually increasing. Rodeos reached their peak in the early 1990s but decreased every year until 2006, when it reached its lowest number of 560 rodeos in the United States. But there’s still an audience, and with prize money growing ever higher, that number has begun to creep up once again. Today there are six hundred professional rodeos held across the country and approved by the Professional Rodeo Cowboys Association. Membership in a popular organization like the Professional Bull Riders association has grown from twenty members in the early ’90s to about one thousand today.

The competition for bullfighters is steep. Being one of the top ten bullfighters in the country helps Munsell get the jobs he needs to stay competitive in the business. “It sure enough is a dog-eat-dog industry,” he says, adding there used to be a saying that bullfighters are a dime a dozen, but now it is more like a penny a dozen. “I’m very fortunate to have known a lot of really good bullfighters and they thought enough of me at a young age that I might be a good fill-in for them when they retired.”

A bullfighter can make between $100 and $500 per rodeo. “You’ve got to treat this profession as a business and not be going for cheap money, because you don’t make a very good living at it if you’re going cheap,” Munsell notes.

Healthy Respect for the Bull

Most people wouldn’t step foot anywhere near a bull, and with good reason. But with a lifetime of being around bulls and bullfighting, Munsell no longer holds any fear when he steps into the arena.

“I know how to control those nerves better than most,” he says. “People always ask me, ‘Are you scared of those bulls?’ No, not really—I’ve been around them all my life. I have more of a respect for the animal than I do a fear [of them].” Smart bullfighters keep a healthy respect for the animal and what it is capable of. Because a bull is fifteen times his size, Munsell believes it will take only one kick or one well-placed blow to the head to take someone out permanently.

“It’s not a fear. If I died fighting bulls, I’d probably die a happy guy because I went doing what I enjoyed,” he says.

Munsell has on occasion been treated as a human-sized soccer ball and is regularly flung into the air. Injuries are just a part of the job, an accepted hazard. Bullfighters often break multiple bones and worse, but they understand what they’ve signed up for.

“I’ve been very fortunate as far as injuries go, knock on wood,” he says. “And I just kind of attribute that to good fundamentals and doing things correctly. Good fundamentals get you a long way.”

Even the best training can only prevent accidents some of the time. Just a month ago, Munsell was at a rodeo in Dodge City watching a cowboy dismount from a bull when things suddenly went wrong.

The rider flew off a bull’s back just as the animal kicked up and turned, flipping the man in the air. Munsell raced to help the contestant and got hit on the head by one of the cowboy’s spurs. This was a particularly awful injury because the spurs used by the riders are dulled so as not to pierce the skin of the animal. A sharp spur might just cut Munsell, but a dull one was assured to do more tearing than cutting—and in the process cause a nastier wound.

“I’m going through the gap, he’s landing, and something just hits me in the head,” Munsell remembers. “And I didn’t think nothing of it because it wasn’t a super hard hit or anything, so I just keep going and passed around that bull, and I can see red coming down my face, and I just take my hand and check up there and I’m bleeding like a goddang stuck hog.”

After the bull was back in the pen, Munsell walked over to the athletics trainer who looked at him with a horrified expression on his face. Munsell’s injury was a nasty, deep slice just above his eye and had to get stitched up.

“It’s not scary at the time because you don’t know what’s just happened because it happened so fast,” Munsell says. “When you sit down and think about it, you’re like, ‘Son of a gun, that coulda put my eye out …’ That’s the only thing that kind of scares me, is when it is something like that.”

Another similar injury occurred at the Denver Stock Show eight years before. A bull bucked its rider off, and when Munsell raced in the animal ran him over. He fell as the rider was getting to his feet.

“I just thought I hit my head on something really hard and just kind of sat up and gathered myself, and a buddy of mine standing in the back of the chutes said, ‘Hey, you need to get yourself checked out.’ And I said, ‘Man, am I bleeding? Because I can taste blood?’ And he said, ‘Yeah, go look.’” Munsell had landed face first on the rider’s boot spur, which punctured through his cheek and knocked out a tooth.

“Same kind of thing, I just hate things happening in or around my head,” Munsell says. “You can hit me anywhere else you want—just not my head.”

Not being hurt often means getting off the ground and avoiding being stomped on by a bull, which can weigh more than a thousand pounds. Munsell wears safety gear comprising of a protective vest, and leg and knee protection designed to let striking hooves and horns slide off easily—but at some points it must feel a bit like a can of sardines being run over by a car.

A Bullfighter’s Legacy

While the West and Western culture is Munsell’s way of life, he says one day if he has children he’d like them to experience it—but he wouldn’t push their involvement in rodeos. He knows being a bullfighter is a profession that has an expiration date on it.

“Every former bullfighter that I know has said the same thing: the bulls will let you know when you need to quit,” Munsell tells me. “I don’t want to get to that point.”

His own father worked in the industry until he was forty-one. Munsell says he couldn’t see himself working much past that age.

“Being in the position I’m in, being one of the top guys in the game, I don’t want to do anything to prevent me not being seen in a positive way when I do retire,” Munsell says. “There’s a lot of great bullfighters that went out way too late, and they were very good when they were in their twenties and thirties—and could have had a better legacy if they had the foresight to retire sooner.”

The oldest bullfighter he’s aware of fought until he was fifty-five years old, something Munsell has no desire to do himself. He says he wants people to say he went out while he was at the top of his game. But that time is still years away. In the meantime, Munsell is back in the arena, in position and ready for whatever happens next.