If you’ve ever come across the bizarre and hilarious Ben Stiller wrestling bull image, you may have wondered whether it shows the actor taking on a real bull. The image actually comes from the world of DodgeBall: A True Underdog Story, where Stiller plays the outrageously confident White Goodman. The larger-than-life painting perfectly captures White’s ridiculous macho personality and has since become one of the movie’s most memorable visual jokes.
In this post, I’ll look at where the image came from, what it means, and why it became so memorable.
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The famous Ben Stiller Wrestling Bull image
There is a painting of White Goodman wrestling a bull in his office. In the artwork, White is shown grabbing the bull by the horns and physically overpowering it.
The joke is essentially a visual version of the expression “take the bull by the horns.” It is deliberately ridiculous because White sees himself as a fearless, extraordinarily macho businessman, while the audience can see how hilariously over-the-top his self-image is.
The painting has become surprisingly recognizable outside the movie.
It is often referred to as:
- Ben Stiller wrestling bull
- White Goodman wrestling bull
- Dodgeball wrestling bull
- Ben Stiller bull painting
- White Goodman bull painting
- Ben Stiller taking the bull by the horns
- Dodgeball bull poster
The image has also been reproduced on posters, shirts and novelty artwork, which is why you may encounter it without immediately realizing that it comes from DodgeBall.
Is Ben Stiller Actually Wrestling a Bull?
No. This is an important distinction.
It isn’t a scene in which Stiller actually gets into a wrestling match with a real bull. It’s a fictional painting displayed as part of White Goodman’s ridiculous personal mythology.
So if you’ve seen an image of a muscular Ben Stiller/White Goodman grappling with a bull, you’re looking at artwork from the world of DodgeBall rather than a photograph of Stiller performing a stunt.
Why the image is so funny
The painting perfectly captures White Goodman’s personality.
White is obsessed with:
- physical strength
- bodybuilding
- competition
- appearing dominant
- his own attractiveness
- Globo Gym’s superiority over Average Joe’s
The bull painting takes all of that to an absurd extreme. Instead of merely being a successful gym owner, White imagines himself as someone who can literally overpower nature itself.
And that’s very much the humor of DodgeBall: White’s enormous ego is constantly presented as though it were completely normal.
Interestingly, Stiller has had an actual connection with professional wrestling too.
In July 1999, he appeared on WWF Raw, where Jeff Jarrett put him in a Figure-Four Leglock after Stiller was promoting Mystery Men.
So there are actually two different “Ben Stiller + wrestling” things that can get confused:
- Ben Stiller wrestling a bull → the DodgeBall painting of White Goodman.
- Ben Stiller wrestling a human wrestler → his real 1999 WWF/Raw appearance with Jeff Jarrett.
If what you saw was the very muscular man grappling with a huge bull, that’s definitely the DodgeBall/White Goodman image.
Dodgeball Wrestling Bull/Dodgeball Painting Bull/Ben Stiller Taking the Bull by the Horns/Ben Stiller Wrestling Bull/White Goodman Bull Painting
If you would like to buy a custom Dodgeball Wrestling Bull painting with your face on it, you can get that here.
The term “Dodgeball Wrestling Bull” refers to a memorable scene from the 2004 comedy film Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story, in which the character White Goodman (played by Ben Stiller) is depicted wrestling a bull in a painting displayed in his office.
This painting is a humorous visual representation of the phrase “taking the bull by the horns,” which Goodman uses to describe his approach to business.
Photo Credit: Etsy