Back in February myself and journalist/photographer Linda Peterson had the opportunity to sit down with the three-time PBR World Champion bull rider, Adriano Moraes. He had been experiencing a slump during the first eight events of the 2007 season, covering only seven of the 19 bulls he got on. Little did he know that it would get much worse before it got better. In the next five events he went one for 12, which made a total of eight rides for 31 attempts – ouch!
Just what was happening to this great champion? Luckily for me, Moraes is not one to mince words and is very comfortable speaking his mind. Boy does he make my job easy!
The first thing I was wondering was how he was feeling, as he had long been plagued with a bad back. “Physically, fine,” he told me. “Best I’ve felt in a year, I guess. I have a sports trainer who’s very good, he strengthens my muscles, and I still do my chiropractic care, so it’s a perfect combination. I’m almost healed 100%. By strengthening my muscles it keeps my spine in place. But if it shifts off it hurts more because the muscles are stronger, so if it shifts it holds my spine crooked and it hurts much more. But once it gets very very strong, it will be harder to move. So I am in a position now that if it shifts off, it’s going to hurt.”
But a bull rider learns early on to play with pain. If they can’t, they are not in this game very long. If it wasn’t physical then it must be mental. Could that possibly be? It could and was. “I’m doing the same stuff, but I’m not excited enough. Same old stuff, one more event – I need something different to excite me now. Like in Atlanta, I got excited.” He drew a super bull in the short go, Versus, aka Stray Kitty. “I got bucked off but I was excited to have Stray Kitty. I was loose and I tried.”
He was quick to point out that all of the events are important, but “It’s hard every weekend, one more weekend, to get on an ordinary bull – they can all throw you off, it does happen – but you don’t get pumped. That’s my biggest challenge this year now, is to get motivated.”
All right, he knows the problem. How does he fix that? “I don’t know, that’s something I need to figure out. I thought I had it, especially in New York. New York, first event ever at Madison Square Garden, great bulls, so I was excited, and I rode great there. I bucked off in the short round; you cannot ride all of them, but I rode good.
“So I thought ‘that’s going to be it.’ But then, right after that was Worcester, and it was back to the same old routine and I lost the groove. I need to find something to get a hold of. I think I’m going to try a breathing technique tonight.”
This is not something new to Moraes. He used this method at the Finals last year. “I’m going to try breathing tonight, focus on my breathing and see if I can get that adrenaline working. But what happens, when you use that technique you get a little light-headed. That got me a little scared. But I need to try that again.
“I know what to do,” he continued. “I’ve been doing this for 18 years. I know better than anybody what to do – if I let myself do it. But I am preventing myself from doing so.”
He acknowledges that with age come changes. “Life changes, your body changes, the mind changes, but you’ve got to accomplish the same thing, that eight-second ride, in a different way. I cannot ride the way I did when I was 21. I cannot ride the way I did when I was 31. I have to find a different way to do it. But I cannot do it using the same things that I did in the past, and I think that is the key to my longevity is my adaptability to the new era.”
Adriano has been riding for 18 years professionally. “Eighteen years, the bulls are different. I have been through three generations of bulls. If you’re not adaptable and flexible you can’t improve.
“Actually,” he said, “it is easier to ride now. We don’t have to do anything but nod our head. Everything is set up for us. The money is there, the TV is there, the sponsorship money is there, and great bulls are there.”
I could see where he was going with this as he continued. “Before it was the luck of the draw. Not any more. They all buck now. It’s totally up to you. If you ride, you make money. Before, sometimes you ride, you don’t make a dime. So it’s much, much easier today. Well, harder in the respect that the bulls are harder, but that’s just eight seconds. The other stuff is set up for you.”
The conversation went back to this sport being a mind game. I said that I thought it was. Adriano corrected me a bit on that. “I believe the mind game, at a certain age. Up to 30 years old, it’s not a mind game. It is totally, completely physical, because you still have the drive, you still have the desire, and you still have the youth. I’m not saying I’m old – I’m a little older, more miles, than the other kids. What I’m saying is that up to that point it’s much easier. Then, things do change.
“OK,” he explained, “the deal is, I’m 37 years old, I’m three-time World Champion, financially I’m not rich, but I’m set. I’ve got $100,000 coming for 10 years, so I’m set. My family’s perfect, everything is great in life. I’ve accomplished everything a bull rider could ever dream of, more than anybody has ever done. Why am I riding? Because I love it.”
There is no doubt that the passion is still there for Moraes, but do others see it that way? Adriano doesn’t think so.
“So, it’s very easy to criticize Adriano Moraes, Adriano Moraes is jumping off, Adriano Moraes in not trying – yes, but be in my boots. Be in my boots. I don’t have to prove anything to anybody. Because it’s hard for me to get excited on a Joe Blow bull at an ordinary event, it’s easy to criticize me, because they’re not in my shoes.
“They are 28, 29 years old, they have no titles or maybe one title, ‘Oh yeah, Adriano’s using sports psychology,’ but at my age it’s not stupid. They don’t know what’s it like, they still have that hunger. Of course, they don’t need it! Sports psychology, at my age I need it. Sometimes I think, ‘Guys, why are you criticizing me? I don’t understand why they’re criticizing me, because – man! They cannot come close to what I’ve accomplished.”
The three of us talked a bit about some speculations as to why so many would criticize him; not worth going into here. But apparently it was going on last year as well. Moraes had his own way of answering back, though. “I kicked their asses!”
I obviously am not on the tour. I don’t even remotely pretend to know how things go behind the chutes. But I do know that this man has done so much for the sport, this attitude is lost on me. Lost on Adriano as well, it seems.
“I don’t get it,” he said. “people, instead of saying, ‘hey, he’s an example for the sport, he has love and passion for the sport,’ say, ‘Oh, he’s stupid, look what he’s doing, he’s just forcing things.’ Whatever.”
Adriano looks at himself as two people in one. He is Adriano Moraes the three-time World Champion, which is a product, which is there for people to see, and Adriano Moraes the man. He sees it as two different things.
He is also a PBR Director and an owner of the PBR, and a fan of the sport. “I am the sports biggest fan. But I feel that they (the PBR) are losing when they do not promote Adriano Moraes the product, the rider, as a hero – as an example to be copied.”
Moraes does have one other thing, and that is a sense of humor. The night before this interview he bucked off. He was explaining that.
“Last night I said, ‘Ah yes, I’m going to do it!’ But when the bull moved, I was like, ‘Ah, what the heck,’ I just look off and jump off. That was my fastest dismount ever. Last year I think I was off in 0.8 seconds, last night I think it was 0.2, so I broke my own record!
“I do beat myself up all the time,” he chuckled. “But it’s just one more challenge, one more, I’ll say chapter, in my history book. But this might be my biggest challenge so far – I think it is. The physical challenge, what the heck, I’m used to pain, and I can overcome that, I’m strong. But this I believe is my biggest challenge, and what I have to focus on, and I need to prevail one more time, because I still love the sport, I still believe I can ride every single bull. But mentally I cannot ride, RIGHT NOW! I mean, five minutes ago I could not ride a leaping goat, but from now on I can ride a Reindeer! (This is a reference to the super yet psychotic bull Reindeer Dippen.)
“So, I don’t want to quit yet. I want to quit the day I say ‘I don’t want to ride anymore,’ not that I can’t.”
Moraes has another motivation as well. “I want to make the recipe for longevity. It’s a shame that a 30-year-old, 32, 33-year-old young man has to quit because they don’t have the recipe of how to keep going. So I want to give a chance to the 35’s, 37’s, 39’s, 43’s, who knows?
“I’m going to be criticized for sure, I will, because I’m in a position that everything I do now I’m criticized anyway. But I need to spend money to make money. I’m going to take my chiropractor with me. He doesn’t come to events; he comes to my room and adjusts me. I’ll also start taking my sports trainer with me, and he’s going to have a back pass. He’s going to be the one to pump me up, because I can’t. He’s going to be the one yelling at my head.
“Before I had the toolbox in my hand and I could pick the keys that I wanted. Now, the toolbox is there, but I just cannot choose the right keys anymore. I need somebody to hand me the keys. I know how to hit the ball, but set the ball for me, I’m not going to get down and put the ball down.” He was laughing now, as were we.
“But seriously,” he continued, “I’m not getting lazy, but I’m getting tired. I need a driver now. If I drive two hours I have to sleep two extra hours, so it’s two more hours out of my day, which is already busy. If somebody drives for me I can sleep those two hours, so I can work out two hours more. So that is just another way that I’ve got to adapt.
“It is hard for a cowboy to accept change. I accept it easier than a lot of the guys, but still sometimes I go, ‘That’s not right!’ but now I’m realizing that sometimes what seems wrong is right. I don’t think that a better thing can happen to a person, getting older, more experience, that kind of thing.”
It was pointed out that perhaps Adriano should explain that to the boys. “I don’t have to, they’ll see. Five, 10 years, they’ll see it. Look, I’ve been controversial since I was 18 years old, since I started riding bulls. I did everything completely and totally different from everybody else. Even my rope. You know, it’s not a Brazilian rope. That’s one thing that I’m now going to claim. That’s my rope, I designed the backward rope. They call it Brazilian style, it’s Adriano style. 99.9% of all Brazilians now ride with my rope, but they call it Brazilian rope. It’s Adriano’s rope. I designed it, I changed it. So controversy is my middle name.”
Adriano and I spoke a couple of minutes about interviews. I was speaking to him just prior to that evenings’ event, and at first was a bit concerned about that. He said that he didn’t mind this type of interview, or as he called it, conversation, before an event because it makes him think. I told him I did not like to do Q and A interviews because I want to get to know the person. He doesn’t like those kind either because, as he told me, “it limits you.”
Adriano is by far one of my favorite people to speak with, and he certainly wasn’t limited to a few choice words in this article. Thank God for that! I gave you pure Adriano here, the man we have gotten to know a little bit over the years, and it doesn’t get better than that. Well, actually it does. Out of the last eight events he has competed in (he chose to miss one) he has ridden 15 of 23 bulls. He was the only man to cover all four of his bulls at the latest event in Tulsa, Oklahoma and won the average there. He now sits eighth in the BFTS. I’m telling you, don’t EVER count him out.
I want to thank Adriano so much for his time and patience, and I really look forward to speaking with him in later this month, when Linda and I will be Chihuahua – Mexico bound, baby!
All photos credit Andy Watson
Be safe and God Bless,
Viva La Raza,
Barb.
