Cameron Delano

Cameron Delano rides bulls on the PBR tour, plays semi pro football, and is training for his first bare knuckle fight.

He came on Salty's Fight Talk with that first fight still unannounced. Cason Banyas opened by telling him he was probably the most interesting fighter the show had booked, stretched across the whole front of three rough sports at once. The two had a man in common. Harrison Aiken, a fighter SALTYmf sponsors, had taken Delano into his camp and told Cason he was training a bull rider who wanted to go bare knuckle. Cason wanted to hear how that happened.

Delano grew up on a farm in a rodeo family. His aunt and uncle run Cohen Ranch, a rodeo association in Greenwood, South Carolina. His mother kept him off the stock while he played football, so he waited until he was an adult. His first grown bull was a spur of the moment entry at a rodeo in Pickens, South Carolina, no spurs, no rosin on the glove to stick his hand to the rope. He rode the eight seconds, then rode about ten more the same way before he started studying video, picked up bad habits and began getting thrown. He has been on the PBR tour four years. Every ride, by his own math, is a fifty fifty chance of a blown knee or a broken rib.

Football went first. He had played since he was four, spent off seasons in Texas with USA Football, made the top sixty squad and finished his senior year ranked twenty second in the country at running back. He had committed to the University of Georgia. Then his neck compressed under a hit that came from three angles. Three orthopedic doctors told him to stop. One more hit locked him up so he could not move for five minutes. His grandmother, who he is closest to, begged him to quit, and he told her no. He dropped from 200 pounds to 175, came home and vanished for a month, sitting in the woods hog hunting every day because football was the only thing he knew. It took a year to get himself back in gear and five before he touched a football again.

His daughter is five. She used to ask for cartoons at bedtime and now asks for bare knuckle fighting, so he pulls up old cards and she watches half an hour of it beside him before she falls asleep. She has worked out what her father is about to do and asked him if he was going to punch that guy in the face. He told her she was right. He also works with Make a Wish, and says he tries to stay in a positive spotlight.