He wasn’t the biggest. Not by a long shot. When you saw May We All in the pens at a Professional Bull Riders (PBR) event, he didn't necessarily look like a monster that would ruin a man's weekend. But then the gate cracked.
That’s the thing about the "May We All" bull. He became a household name in the Western sports world because he possessed a specific kind of athletic violence that looked like art. People talk about "rank" bulls all the time—the ones that are impossible to ride—but this bovine athlete, owned by Dakota Rodeo and Chad Berger, brought a level of consistency that earned him a permanent spot in the highlight reels of the late 2010s and early 2020s. He wasn't just a bucking animal. He was a gate-to-paycheck gatekeeper.
Honestly, if you were a rider and you saw his name next to yours on the draw, you felt two things at once: pure terror and a weird sense of luck. Why luck? Because if you could stay on him for eight seconds, you were probably going to win the round.
The Performance Profile of May We All
What made May We All so dangerous? It wasn't just the height of his jump. It was the "drift."
Most bulls have a pattern. They come out, they blow up, and they spin. May We All had a habit of moving across the arena while he was spinning, which essentially pulls the ground out from under the rider. You think you're centered, and suddenly, the bull’s entire mass has shifted six feet to the left while he’s still mid-air. It’s a nightmare for your equilibrium.
In the 2019 and 2020 seasons, his stats were staggering. We’re talking about a bull that maintained an average buckoff time of under four seconds for a huge chunk of his career. You’ve got guys like Jess Lockwood or Jose Vitor Leme—world champions, the best to ever do it—having to put in 110% effort just to match his timing.
I remember watching him at the World Finals. The atmosphere changes when a "money bull" like this enters the chutes. The dirt feels heavier. The crowd gets a bit quieter because they know they’re about to see a car crash or a masterpiece. There is no middle ground with May We All.
The Chad Berger Factor
You can't talk about May We All without talking about Chad Berger. Berger is a legend in the stock contractor world, a multi-time PBR Stock Contractor of the Year. He has a knack for finding bulls that have "it"—that intangible desire to win the encounter.
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Berger often spoke about the bull's temperament. May We All wasn't a "mean" bull in the back pens. He wasn't trying to gore people through the bars. He was a professional. He knew his job started the moment the latch turned. That psychological profile is actually what separates the greats from the average buckers. A bull that wastes all its energy fighting the chute is a bull that's easy to ride. May We All saved every ounce of that explosive power for the arena floor.
Why the Fans Obsessed Over Him
Social media changed how we view PBR. In the old days, you had to catch the broadcast on TNN or Versus. Now, Every "trip" May We All took was viral fodder.
The name helped, too. "May We All," borrowed from the Florida Georgia Line song, gave him a sort of blue-collar, anthemic vibe. It felt like he represented the spirit of the sport. He was the underdog who became the powerhouse.
But it’s the mechanics that experts love. Let's get technical for a second. When May We All would exit the chute, he’d lead with a massive front-end drop. This puts the rider’s weight over their "front door"—meaning they’re leaning too far forward. The moment the rider compensates by leaning back, the bull kicks his rear end toward the rafters. It’s a seesaw effect that most humans simply aren't built to survive.
- Average Bull Score: Often hovered in the 44-46 point range.
- Buckoff Percentage: Consistently above 80% against the top 35 riders in the world.
- Signature Move: The high-speed away-from-your-hand spin.
Basically, if you were a right-handed rider and he turned back to the left, you were essentially trying to stay on a spinning tornado while being pulled off the side of a cliff.
Comparing Him to the All-Time Greats
Is he Little Yellow Jacket? No. Is he Bushwacker? Probably not.
But May We All belongs in that second tier of "Elite Reliability." While Bushwacker was an anomaly of pure power, May We All was a technician. He was the bull that tested whether a rider actually knew the fundamentals. If you cheated your ropes or didn't have your feet set, he exposed you instantly.
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I’ve talked to guys who worked the chutes during his prime. They said the air around him felt different. Some bulls are frantic; May We All was cold. He was calculating. He’d stand perfectly still, wait for the rider to nod, and then explode. That's the mark of a truly great bucking bull—the ability to go from zero to a hundred without telegraphing the move.
The Longevity Myth
People think these bulls only have a year or two at the top. May We All defied that for a while. He stayed relevant in the PBR Unleash The Beast series longer than many of his peers. This comes down to the care he received.
Critics of the sport often don't realize that these bulls are treated like NFL quarterbacks. They have specific diets, physical therapy, and massive ranches to roam. May We All was the beneficiary of the best bovine sports medicine available. When he finally started to slow down, it wasn't because he lost his heart; his body just finally hit the limit of what that level of athleticism allows.
What Riders Genuinely Thought
If you ask a guy like Derek Kolbaba or Cooper Davis about him, they'll tell you he was a "rank" draw.
"Rank" is the highest compliment in rodeo. It means the animal is difficult, dangerous, and respected. There’s a specific kind of respect that grows between a rider and a bull when they meet multiple times. It’s a chess match. The rider watches film. They study which way the bull dips his shoulder. They look at the tail flick—sometimes a bull flicks his tail the direction he’s about to spin.
With May We All, the "tell" was almost non-existent. He was a blank slate until the second he was in the air. That’s why his buckoff videos are so violent; the riders are often caught completely out of position because they tried to outsmart a bull that doesn't play by the rules.
The Legacy of the 01C Brand
May We All carried the 01C brand, and that brand carries weight. It represents a lineage of North Dakota grit.
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Looking back at his career highlights, particularly his outs in places like Las Vegas or Cheyenne, you see a pattern of dominance. He was a cornerstone of the Dakota Rodeo string. When a contractor is trying to win a team title or a Stock Contractor of the Year award, they need an "anchor" bull. May We All was that anchor. He was the guaranteed "big score" of the night, whether the rider stayed on or not.
Even now, when we look at the new crop of bulls coming up through the ABBI (American Bucking Bull Inc.) ranks, scouts are looking for the "next May We All." They want that combination of a flat-back spin and a high-kick finish.
What You Can Learn from May We All
You might think, I’m not a bull rider, why does this matter? It matters because May We All is a masterclass in specialized talent. He didn't try to be the biggest; he perfected the specific mechanics of his craft. He was a specialist in lateral movement and vertical explosion.
If you're looking to understand the sport better, or perhaps you're getting into amateur stock contracting, study the footage of this bull.
- Watch the front feet: Notice how quickly they hit the ground and rebound. That's "snap."
- Observe the rider's hips: See how they are constantly being forced out of the "well" (the center of the bull).
- Look at the finish: May We All rarely finished a bucking motion weakly. He worked until the whistle or the dirt.
Moving Forward in the PBR World
The era of May We All has transitioned into the history books, but his influence on breeding programs continues. His genetics and the "style" of bucking he popularized are being sought after by breeders across the country.
If you want to dive deeper into this world, your next steps are simple. Stop looking at just the scores and start looking at the "outs." Go to the PBR's RidePass or YouTube and search for May We All's 2019 season. Compare his trips to the current world champion bulls. You’ll see that while some bulls are bigger today, few have the "dance" that May We All brought to the dirt.
To really appreciate what happened during those years, you have to realize that we were witnessing a peak athlete at the top of his game. It just so happened that the athlete weighed 1,500 pounds and had horns.
Next time you're at a live event, watch the bulls in the pens before the show starts. Look for the one that isn't pacing. Look for the one that's just watching the crowd, calm and collected. That’s where the next legend is hiding. May We All proved that the quiet ones are the ones that'll leave you face-down in the dirt before you even know what happened.
Get involved by following the ABBI results for May We All's lineage. The sport is evolving, but the blueprint he left behind—the drift, the snap, and the sheer professional will—is still the gold standard for what a rank bull should be.