SPRINGFIELD, Mo. – Joe Garretson thinks nothing about his job as a cowboy lifesaver, a professional protection bullfighter whose job is to attract the animal’s attention from the fallen cowboy.
On the second night of the Professional Championship Bullriders stop in Cincinnati, Garretson stepped into position and grabbed the bull’s attention. The animal, then, got hold of the bullfighter, as it were, and went to work on Garretson. The end results was a broken collarbone, 12 broken ribs, a lacerated liver, a punctured lung and five minutes of unconsciousness.
It wasn’t necessarily the Springfield bullfighter’s finest hour, and neither were the following five days he spent at University Hospital in Cincinnati.
“The bull rider came off, and I stepped to him and Joe stepped to the bull, which isn’t out of the ordinary for us,” said Brandt Clark, Garretson’s longtime partner in protection bullfighting. “The bull got under his jersey and underneath his vest, but then it looked like Joe got away from him. And that’s nothing out of the ordinary. You take the hit, then you just keep going.
“But Joe’s jersey stuck to that’s bull’s horn and acted like a yo-yo. The bull put his head down and mowed over the top of him like a steamroller. For a split second, I thought he was going to get away, but then things like that happen, especially in this sport.”
Medical personnel took extra precautions with Garretson, who was just working the event with a broken arm he suffered the week before. He was removed from the arena on a backboard, something he recalls about the incident.
“I was cussing them for putting me on that backboard,” he said. “It was probably the best thing for me, but I figure I could’ve walked out under my own power.”
Little did he realize the severity of his injuries. A dozen fractured ribs are enough, but the liver and lung injuries were enough for preventative care.
“Other than Joe’s injury, the worst part of that was that we were two bulls from the meat of the potatoes from that event,” Clark said. “We were on our sixth bull of a 40-header, and (funnyman) Ryan Rodriguez had to fight bulls the rest of the night.”
Garretson was named the PCB’s 2008 bullfighter of the year, an honor he had hoped to carry with him to the association’s finale Feb. 6-7 in Chicago. But the injuries were too severe for him to fight bulls at the Sears Centre. Still, there was no keeping a good man down. On the day he got out of the hospital, he traveled from Cincinnati to Chicago so that he and bullfighter-turned-announcer Rob Smets could do some pre-event publicity.
“Joe has the heart of a warrior, so if you tell him he can’t do something, he’ll prove you wrong,” Clark said. “He’s the toughest guy I know.”
And with that mentality, look for Garretson to be back in the arena with the PCB kicks off its 2009, 12-event tour in Toledo, Ohio.
“He’s got it set in his mind that he’ll come back for Toledo,” Clark said. “I don’t think it’ll affect him mentally. He can handle that. I’m sure there’ll be some soreness, but mentally he’s tough as nails.
“At the Professional Bullfighters World Finals a year ago, a bull kicked him in the face and busted his nose. He never missed a lick."
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