Guy Fieri on bull riding and many injuries: “I was bleeding out”

what do you remember from when back in the day you wanted to be a professional bull rider and the injuries you got oh yeah so anything I was interested in doing my dad would be my dad was there to help me with as long as I showed effort my dad would get involved with me on it like I want to have I wanted to open a bike store so I went and collected all the old bik bike parts I could find and started building these really horrible bikes but um so anything I want to be so I wanted to be I would ride the mechanical bull at the fair that was my favorite thing to do is ride the fair cuz I had a little business selling pretzels right next to the pretzel Booth was the mechanical bull so every time I had a chance mechanical wasn't working I'd give the guy that ran the bull a pretzel and he'd let me ride I wasn't a very big kid I didn't grow until I was sophomore junior in high about sophomore in high school so I would stick on the bull I mean just stick couldn't throw me so that's like I love Rodeo I wanted to be a jockey I was too big to be a jockey but I worked at the race track and rode horses a bunch and did a little team rope and a little calf rope I was kind of a multi I did everything Ian I was just a I live in a town where you could do everything so I told my dad I wanted to the rodeo was coming and I wanted to ride a bowl he says that's fine so I had to go out to the he says you got to prove you can you can't just say that a mechanical thing is going to work so I go out to a friend's Ranch get on the bull one two three knocked off I mean it wasn't working so an Old Timer came up and said you got to change your hands and you got lean back and here we go so I come out of this half-made Chute riding this young little like year and a half two-year-old Brahma I mean tiny thing still didn't really have hadn't filled out so I'm riding the backbone and uh like nylon cord and I'm riding it I'm making it and all of a sudden one of these Australian sheeper dogs jumps off the back of a truck and comes running out after that bull and bites that bull in the nose and that bull just Goes Bananas cuz it's it scared the bull it's not like the bull was fighting it so the bull and it cuts to the right as I'm going to the left and I'm up in the air and I can just look over and I just see the bull kind of jump and I just watch my arm go and I knew I'd broke my wrist and I'm as I'm falling the bull kicks me right in the side of the head and as I fall forward I land right on my face right into a rock and flip my lip open and as I'm laying there the dog's so excited it runs over and bites me and you're how old 12 maybe 13 and what happened what happened it broke my arm oh so the whole thing that ends up happening is I can't tell my parents this has happened okay my arm is killing me so well I didn't tell you this part it was five miles from my home to go ride the bull and I didn't want to ride my BMX bike so with my bll riding boots on and my big cowboy hat I rode my mom's Schwin bike with the Wicker Basket okay looks like the one You' see in Wizard of Ozz so I get out there there well my arm's killing me so I go let the air out of the tires and I call my dad and I say dad you got to come pick me up I think I ran over some nails or something my the tires are flat so he picks me up he doesn't my dad always could read through my bow I mean it was like I don't even know why he would let me tell but he would let me do it so at the end around he could come back around to teach me the lesson he was the greatest I mean my hero my Obi-Wan Kenobi so I'm complaining about my arm so we go out to our Lake our cabin at the lake and I'm digging this fire pit and so I'm half ass swinging that the pickaxe and he's yelling at me you know going to sit there and complain about this arm and then you're going to want a water ski later today and I and I didn't water ski or anything my just arms kill me but I can't talk about it so the next finally we go back into town and it's Monday morning and I'm just complaining about my arm my mom's like Jesus go see doc Weiser all right enough so doc Weiser was our town dock that's how small this town is there's no stoplight there's one cop car there's you know so I walk in to see doc Weiser and he goes grabs my arm he goes right there I'm like oh yeah he goes guy your AR your wrist broken he goes come in here for a second comes in sits me down plasters up my arm doesn't call my parents doesn't there's no x-rays doesn't take an x-ray plasters up my arm say okay you can go so I walk back over to right directly across the street to day of sry and I have my arm behind my back I'm like so Dad anything you want me to do maybe go split some wood or maybe you know go dig some fence some post holes or something like that with my broken arm and my mom's like damn it I told you don't let them go ride those Bulls that's a stupid no was it your parents are backpacking in Europe uh and uh you get injured a little more MH when I broken everything by the way I mean I have broken so many I've injured and torn things apart yeah you have a big scar from from here to here what happened I know you want see it but I'm not showing you we maybe maybe later maybe later uh so I'm we had horses we had a few few horses and I was getting ready for a horse show and I had this um half quarter horse half Clydesdale named Rebel ironically enough I went to UNLV and I'm a rebel so um my dad's business partner who kind of helped train me on horses a little bit comes over and all I'm doing is running my horse fast across one across the across the field the other way across the field there was some girls on one side of the fence and I was running back and he goes you can't you got this show coming up and you got to get that horse you got to get your form right and start Galloping and so forth get in the circle go you know so I'm kind of going in the CLE and the horse trips and it trips and i' trips and he goes and he's falling and I think he goes down and I fall off and I roll over the shoulder and fall and his next step is on on me and uh I can kind of remember that and I remember their business partner Dave clouse he's walking with his Cane dragging me through this field and I just remember being drugg going this you know something's wrong so he gets me into the truck and he drives me to the hospital and I remember him saying you stay with me guy talk to me talk to me talk to me so I was bleeding out inside and they didn't know why but they couldn't go and check because nobody had a permission they had left a a you know whatever you call it a uh guardianship papers but nothing for this degree so they had to ship me to another hospital where they had to get a court order to do exploratory surgery well back then my parents only called once a week they were gone for 10 weeks right so the call before cell phones yeah and it was the you know line underneath the ocean Mom hello you know you had the weight and so I had been in surgery out of surgery and was in recovery for like four days before they found out and they were losing it you know my mom's like I'm coming home and I'm like don't come home I'm fine you know it's not like I'm going you know next day they go take the stitches out some reason stitches didn't take it was serious I mean you're almost uh downplaying the severity of oh no it was no it was really serious it what had happened is it the the impact had torn the ligament that hel holds my liver so it ripped the ligament off my liver so my liver was bleeding and some had a little thing to my heart too but what was the recovery process oh God it's not hospital for like two weeks and you hadd run around with big old scarred on my stomach and it's in my abdomen area so there's no real heavy movement or anything because you got so many layers inside of your abdomen it was weird