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Freestyle bullfighters are bringing the X Games to the rodeo

It’s man versus bull for 60 heart-pounding seconds. The American sport that’s been around for decades has exploded onto the mainstream.

Freestyle bullfighting is kind of like the skateboard vert ramp event at the X Games, except in this iteration, the ramp has two massive horns, weighs 1,500 pounds, and desperately wants to kill you.

The idea of freestyle bullfighting itself isn’t new, but the approach that's starting to explode into the mainstream is. Back in 2015, a former bullfighter mixed his love of skate culture with his distaste for the traditional rodeo scene and came up with Bullfighters Only, a league which pays fearless athletes to step into an arena with a Spanish fighting bull.

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The rules are simple: You’ve got 60 seconds to pull off as many tricks as possible. You also get points for how ferocious your opponent is. Whoever gets the most points walks home with the cash.

And that means that anything goes, whether it be deliberately taunting your bull so that it tries to gore you, pulling backflips as it charges at you, or trying to get it to wear your cowboy hat.

VICE News got ringside with a young star in the bullfighting world to find out what it's like and why he wouldn't rather be working a nice, safe desk job.

This segment originally aired March 9, 2017, on VICE News Tonight on HBO.