JB Mauney just confirmed dead on his way to…see more👇👇👇
STEPHENVILLE, Tex. — The black bull stands in an upper pasture on J.B. Mauney’s ranch like a blot on the green ryegrass horizon.
His dark hulk presides over a hilly rise looking down on the tin-roofed hay sheds and iron chutes where Mauney is hard at work.
Mauney moves to a dissonant music of creaking gates, unceasing wind and snorting animal exhalations, punctuated by the laconic cussing of the cowboy himself as he pours feed into buckets.
The bull watches as Mauney makes his way up the hill and steps into the pasture to fill a trough. “A–hole,” he mutters with something like fondness.
Mauney, too, cuts a black outline. From under a black felt cowboy hat, hair blacker than coffee runs to the collar of his black shirt.
The impression of severity is relieved by blue eyes the color of his jeans and a smile crease from the habit of grinning around a Marlboro. It’s an arresting face, burnished by years of outdoor chores, smoke, roistering humor and pain soothed by shots of Jägermeister.
It befits arguably the greatest rodeo bull rider who ever lived and certainly the hardest-bodied, a man who never conceded to any power. Until a bull broke his neck.
“I always knew something like this was going to have to happen,” he says.It had been less than six months since something like this happened. On Sept.
6, during an event in Lewiston, Idaho, a bull named Arctic Assassin sling-shotted Mauney (pronounced Mooney) into the dirt squarely on top of his hat, summarily ending the most legendarily gallant career in rodeoing.
After emergency surgery to stabilize his head on his shoulders, Mauney retreated to heal with wife Samantha and 5-year-old son Jagger on his ranch, a place called Bucktown XV, where he is still adjusting to his abrupt retirement. “Forced retirement,” he corrects. Gesturing at his wife and son, a striking former barrel racer and a child with hair like flying corn silk, he adds, “If it wasn’t for her and that little boy, I’d never have stopped.”
Samantha follows after the boy, who shucks his shoes and clothing like a bird drops feathers while she retrieves them from the ground. “He’s my boss,” she says. She wears loose jeans, a sweatshirt and Converse sneakers, her only adornment some earrings and a diamond ring. J.B. likes to tell a story about that.He picked out the stone at a jewelry store in one of those fancy malls where they also sell what he calls “Louis Vooton.” He looked at the jewel and said, “I like that one.”
Samantha said, “I do, too.” The saleswoman told them it was a fine choice, then announced how much it cost.
“Do what now?” J.B. said.
He looked at the diamond again and began turning it over with his finger.
“Is something wrong with the stone, sir?” the saleslady asked.
“Naw,” J.B. said. “I’m just trying to find the motor on it because I figure anything that expensive, you ought to be able to drive it out of here.”Mauney, 37, was the first man to get legit rich at bull riding. “The Dragonslayer,” they called him, as he set the record for career prize money with more than $7.4 million and tied for most event victories on the Professional Bull Riders circuit with 32. But his real legacy, what made him the most popular draw in fringed chaps, was that he always chose the fiercest bull to ride, costing himself who knows how much more in money and titles.
