"This ain't no rodeo. This is the PBR."

These words echoed through the Carlson Center speakers Sept. 1-3 when the Last Frontier Professional Bull Riding challenge was in town.

The PBR made its debut in Fairbanks with the Enterprise Rent-A-Car Tour. Southern drawls, clinking spurs, and the smell of livestock filled the arena. A dirt-covered floor and bullpens replaced the ice rink, which had been melted and cleaned up days before.

Bull riders from as far away as Brazil and as close as Wasilla attempted eight second rides on bulls with names like Pistol Creek, Skinner and Hanibal.

Paulo Crimber, 26, grew up on a ranch in Olimpia, Sao Paulo, Brazil. Crimber has been with the PBR for eight years, and finished fourth in the Built Ford Tough Series in Chihuahua, Mexico in August.

"I just love to do it," Crimber said between spits of tobacco. "Don't think too much about the future. Just pray and go. Concentrate."

With hooves raking the ground, minor brawls with other bulls, and almost zero patience in the bull pen there was little room for disappointment. Though the Fairbanks crowd may not have been used to the bucking beasts, the riders took them in stride.

"He's rank," was all R.J. Eppers said about Formal Attire, the bull he was scheduled to ride on Friday night.

Admitting to being a little anxious, Eppers said, "You don't calm down, you channel it all -- into the bull."

As riders finished out their eight seconds on the bucking bulls or took a fall, rodeo clowns kept the riders from being chased by the bulls. The clowns used different methods to distract the bulls including flailing their arms, attaching bandanas to their clothes and tapping the bull's horns to focus the animal's attention on the clown rather than the quickly escaping rider.

Rick Erdman from Nebraska, who's been a rodeo clown for 17 years, says he doesn't get scared.

"You just respect the bulls," Erdman said.

Though not always impressed with the comedy banter between the rodeo clowns and the announcer, the crowd, speckled with cowboy hats, cheered and gasped at the bull rides and applauded the half time show put on by the North Range Riders based out of Salcha. They are part of the nationwide Cowboy Mounted Shooting Association.

The crowd wasn't as large as the PBR had hoped for, though. Roughly 3,000 tickets were sold over the three-day event. Kristen Bayer, the Carlson Center box office manager, said low ticket sales could have been because of the 4,000 soldiers from the Stryker Brigade still deployed in Iraq or the three-day weekend. Plus, the hunting season was beginning.

"The problem is that they came at the wrong time of year," said Jeffrey Ruff, 42, a friend of the Berger family, one of seven stock contractors who provided bulls for the event. "This is Alaska. Everyone's out hunting this weekend."

Still, some people managed to fit it all into the Labor Day weekend.

Patrick Keiser, 15, stood above the seats with his friend Tim Mahaney on Sunday night watching the competition below. Keiser says he would have been there on Saturday too but he was out shooting his moose.

"I tried to get him (Mahaney) to wear a cowboy hat, but he's too much of a city slicker," said Keiser, dressed in a PBR t-shirt and belt buckle.

"It's much better live," said Rod Hoskins of bull riding. A veteran of the Vietnam War, Hoskins, 56, was joined by 30 other veterans in coming to Fairbanks for a moose-hunting trip sponsored by the Paralyzed Veterans of America Outdoor Recreation Heritage Fund.

Dan Wetzel, UAF alumni and owner of Alaska Nature Tours, walked and talked freely with the visiting PBR cowboys backstage.

"There's lots of different cowboys," Wetzel said through his thick, white mustache, calling himself a "privileged old bull."

Commenting on life in general, Wetzel struts across the room and said, "You know what they say about this business -- there's more horse's asses than there are horses."

"These riders aren't all working cowboys or ranch hands. They do this professionally," Wetzel said later in a telephone interview. "But they take pride in what they do. They can't show fear. They've courage. It's a good image of a cowboy."