Cody Webster is a three-time PRCA Bullfighter of the year who has fought at the National Finals Rodeo 11 times as of 2024.
“I think it all really reverts back to that childhood. The bull is something that has drove me since I started doing this and I can’t remember the day I started but I was a little bitty kid when this all started taking place,” Webster said. “I’d say I was a cowboy before I was born, I didn’t really have a choice.”
Webster grew up in the arena always going to barrel races or team roping.
“I’d be over the in the corner, running in circles, acting like a crazy kid fighting bulls,” he said. “It’s just something that’s been in me since I remember.”
Webster’s bullfighting career really took off with freestyle bullfighting. It helped him learn how to handle the mental side that comes along with bull fighting.
“It’s really where I cut my teeth, there were lots of nights where I was trying on my cleats, sitting there talking to God like is this it, is this what life’s meant to be,” he said. “You’re absolutely just mangled and you got to dig down deep and figure out that fire and if you really want to go this, I owe a lot of credit back to those bullfighting days. It’s all mental, dealing with fear, dealing with the emotions that come with bullfighting. Some days can be hard to handle.”
Now, despite the pain and the hard days, bullfighting feels less like a job since Webster has fulfilled his childhood dreams. He’s even taken it one step further in recent years and begun raising fighting bulls of his own on his ranch in Oklahoma. Bullfighting, according to Webster, is what makes him him.
“That feeling you get when you have an animal reining in on you that has nothing on its mind other than that to get you and hurt you, there’s no other feeling like it,” he said. “When you’re out there mixing it up with a bad one, when you can take something that’s so dangerous, that’s so strong and so fast and literally can control his mind, his movement, his body with what I’m doing. When you get all of that in a perfect storm and can literally dance with an animal, it is an art.”
Video courtesy of Resistol.
