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Boston is in for a wild ride when professional bull riding comes to TD Garden in January

Boston is in for a wild ride when professional bull riding comes to TD Garden in January

Boston Globe4 days ago
After some 50 trucks dump more than 750 tons of dirt on the Garden floor, more than 100 bulls weighing well over half a ton each will try buck off a cavalry of heavily padded riders holding on for dear life, with one hand, for eight seconds.
This premier rodeo event is an acquired taste. PBR believes Boston has the appetite for it.
Based mostly on 25 'hugely successful' stops of its up-and-coming riders events in Worcester since 1998, PBR CEO and commissioner Sean Gleason believes Boston will turn out.
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'The dates would just never work out for us to try and get to Boston,' said Gleason by telephone from Texas this week. 'Finally they have, and we're extremely excited about the opportunity to return to Massachusetts. It's been a long time for us to bring the primary tour here.'
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The TD Garden visit will be the third on the 18-stop 'Unleash the Beast' tour, coming three weeks after the season opener at SNHU Arena in Manchester, N.H., and a week before the league's 17th annual visit to New York's Madison Square Garden.
Finding time midseason amid the Garden's primary tenants, the Celtics and Bruins, sounds like it's worth it.
'Bringing PBR to Boston is part of our commitment to diversifying the live entertainment experiences we offer our fans,' said Glen Thornborough, TD Garden president and Bruins chief operating office, in an email. 'This is a world-class, high-energy event that's expanding steadily across the East Coast and into major NHL and NBA arenas. We're proud to be part of that growth and excited to introduce something bold and new to our city's rich and exciting sports history.'
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Besides Worcester and Manchester, which has hosted five 'Unleash the Beast' events, PBR's development tour also paid a sold-out visit to Bangor, Maine, this spring, Gleason said.
'We did do some homework on our fan base, and with our TV ratings and the surrounding market, because it's not just Boston proper that will attend this event,' said Gleason. 'Our fans will drive from up to 200 miles to a market to see the PBR when we're in their territory.'
The love of bull riding will be the draw, rather than seeing New England riders, or bulls for that matter, compete.
One rider, Daylon Swearingen, hails from Piffard, N.Y., which is roughly between Rochester and Buffalo, and another, Braidy Randolph, is from Jonestown, Pa.
Other than that, unless you want to make an association between the bull known as Cy Young (87 percent buck-off rate) with the Red Sox, New England ties to bull riding are hard to find.
But New Englanders will find PBR to their liking, Gleason believes.
'I think it's going to be an extremely successful event, much like some of the other first-market events we've done recently, like PPG Paints Arena in Pittsburgh and Crypto.com Arena in LA,' said Gleason. 'We bring the PBR brand of bull riding to a major market and a place where rodeo and western sports really aren't that familiar, but we always surprise and delight people.'
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PBR's "Unleash the Beast" tour was well-received at Madison Square Garden in January.
Andy Watson
In other words, PBR not only is coming to Boston, it expects to be coming back — maybe even one day with an expansion Boston team for its Team Series league that includes the New York Mavericks.
'Pittsburgh last year was a complete sellout, and all of a sudden that became a very viable market for a PBR team. I think the same would hold true in Boston,' said Gleason. 'We've already started working with [TD Garden] on dates for the future should this event be successful, as we think it will be.'
Michael Silverman can be reached at
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There are many versions of the events, including that the Bruins traded Dryden and Alex Campbell to the Canadiens because they learned after choosing Dryden that he intended to go to Cornell. But that's impossible, since Dryden didn't find out he had even been drafted by the Bruins until well into his NHL career, when Canadiens executive Ron Caron mentioned it in passing. According to Dryden, shortly after the draft, his Jr. B coach called him to say he had been taken by Montreal because it was the Canadiens who called the coach to inform him. We all know how things turned out for Dryden and the Bruins, but life unfolded pretty nicely for Allen as well. He played a couple of years in the minors, then returned to his hometown of Timmins, Ont., where he had a long career in policing, then worked for the Ontario attorney general's office. For his part, Allen harbors zero bitterness. And when Dryden, who later went into federal politics, was on business in Timmins in 2008, he reached out and asked Allen to meet him at the airport. Allen wasn't going to go, but his wife convinced him to, and the two principals in the deal met for the first time. When Dryden asked Allen if there was anything he could do for him, Allen had one simple request. He asked Dryden to sign a picture of the two of them together with the inscription, 'Guy, thanks for putting me into the Hall of Fame.' 'I never thought I'd get it,' Allen said. 'But a couple of months later, it came. Isn't that awesome? I put it in a frame, and now I'm glad I went out to meet him.' 14. 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ORR'S HOUSE GETS STUCCOED MARCH 31, 1961 WHEN THE BRUINS BRASS showed up in Gananoque, Ont., for a bantam playoff game in 1961 as a side trip to watch the junior playoffs in nearby Kingston, they were there to watch Doug Higgins and Rick Eaton, stars of the Gananoque team. But it wasn't long before a wispy, 112-pound kid from Parry Sound had them all entranced. Scout Wren Blair, a hockey lifer who later became GM of the Minnesota North Stars, spent a year chasing and wooing Orr. A year later, Orr signed with the Bruins and was dispatched to the Oshawa Generals. As part of the deal, Orr received $10,000, his parents received new cars and the B's paid to have the family home in Parry Sound stuccoed. 20. NEAR-TRAGIC STICK FIGHT SEPTEMBER 21, 1969 A PRE-SEASON GAME IN Ottawa turned ugly and controversial when Bruins defenseman Ted Green and Blues winger Wayne Maki got involved in a stick-swinging duel that went horribly wrong when Maki struck Green in the right temple. It didn't look all that serious at first, but it wasn't long before Sinden, who was behind the B's bench, realized something was very wrong. '(Maki) didn't really mean to hit (Green) where he did,' he said. 'It didn't look serious, but then he stumbled when he got up, and that frightened me. By the time we got him to the hospital, we were worried sick.' Incredibly, the teams played the rest of the game after the incident. For the next couple of hours, Green fought for his life, then underwent an operation to have a metal plate inserted into his skull. Both Green and Maki were charged with assault but were acquitted. Bruins Need Bounce-Back Season From Key Forward The Boston Bruins are hoping to put together a far better season in 2025-26 than they did this past campaign. However, for this to have a real chance of occurring, they will need some of their key players to have bounce-back years. Photo Credit: © Jerome Miron-Imagn Images

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