The pressure is beginning to shift

Chris Shivers has looked great so far, but if you look back on his Finals stats he has the worst stats of any world class – thrown in the category of best of all-time – bull rider. When I looked up his Finals stats this year I couldn't believe they were that bad.

So far this year, however, we're seeing the Chris Shivers who is a two-time World Champion. We're seeing why he's a two-time World Champion.

It's hard to say what all factors into that or what all is causing that. I think that part of it is the neck surgery. I had the same surgery a year ago and I understand how the pain from that injury becomes normal. You start to think the pain is normal and that you just slept wrong or every time it starts killing you, you start to think, "Well, I did this yesterday so it ought to get better."

You're always making excuses for it and you think you need an adjustment and things like that, but when you wake up from that surgery the pain is completely gone. I don't know what it's like to go through that and still be riding, but I know the difference that the surgery makes and I think that has to be helping him a ton.

But I don't think that's the only reason he's doing so well. I think there are a lot of reasons factoring into it.

It seems to me that over the course of my career and all the guys that I have watched – all the athletes in any sport or really any walk of life – when a person is happy in his personal life you see it reflect into his professional life.

Chris was in a position that he really didn't have any pressure coming into these Finals whereas in the past he was a great enough bull rider and a contender, but that's not the case this year because the contenders are the ones with the pressure.

You'll watch that pressure shift during the Finals and that's what makes it interesting.

I'm just using Chris as an example here, but someone like Chris comes into the Finals with no pressure. Well, now he's ridden three bulls and had a lot of high scores so coming into the second weekend a lot of that starts to change.

He went from being a guy with nothing to lose and now he's a guy who is potentially on his way to a PBR World Finals championship.

That's what I think is fun about sports. What I enjoy about watching sports is watching how the different athletes, the great athletes or the athletes that I admire handle different situations. That's something that I think is interesting about the draft.

From a fans perspective – and, yes, I'm a fan – I like watching the different guys and their approaches to the draft; whether it be how smart I think they are in their picks, how brave I think they are or how those sort of decisions, to me, help you become more of a fan of somebody or less of a fan of somebody.

It causes you to have a reason to root for one guy and maybe not another. That makes sports fun to me.

Like was saying earlier, every day during the Finals the pressure starts to shift. There's a high likelihood that the pressures for Guilherme Marchi are really lessened, but he doesn't have it sewn up yet--he's really close.

It's been fun watching him and how he deals with it.

Try being a guy who's been runner-up the last three years. A huge lead doesn't matter at that point because you're the guy who either screwed it up or came in second the last three years and that weighs on you from every angle--to your friends, to the media, to everything that's ever mentioned with your name.

Justin McBride had a taste with that for awhile too and you'll see that scenario make guys stronger or break them, and I've seen it do both.

So far all it seems to have done for Guilherme is make him hungrier and make him more determined. I think right now Guilherme is at the perfect pinnacle of his career. He's at the point where physically he's young enough to be optimum. He's old enough to have the experience that he's converted very well. I've watched him grow a lot as a bull rider and as a champion.

When he first came over here he had a ton of talent, but I thought he had a real weak way of approaching the sport. He came over here and he'd never take re-rides. He basically wanted the easiest bull every time and he just wanted to stay on all the easiest bulls (and that was his approach).

That's not going to work.

If that doesn't change you're never going to be a World Champion. You have to want the challenge of getting on all the rankest bulls in the world. You're not going to be world class and you're not going to be a World Champion with that mindset.

I think that's something that has made Justin McBride so successful. He wants the bulls that haven't been ridden. He wants the rankest bulls. He wants to try to win first every time. He doesn't want to make excuses.

When there's a chance for something great to happen or something that's going to be legendary or a matchup that 15 years from now, 20 years from now, 100 years from now that maybe we'll still be talking about--that's the position that Justin wanted to be in.

I'm just using Justin as an example, but if you go down the list of champions than I can give you a whole bunch of names. I think that's a trait you can see – that and the confidence.

Guilherme, when he was younger, he got to playing that real safe route of not wanting to take re-rides. I used to say, "If this guy ever figures out for himself how good he is and starts believing in himself and knowing he can ride any bull out there, that's when he'll become a champion."

I've watched him grow and I really feel like Guilherme is in that position now.