Koltin Hevalow is a tough guy. The 22-year-old Smithville native is a rising star with the Kansas City Outlaws professional bull-riding team, but he has deep admiration for UFC fighters as well.

“They're bad-to-the-bone guys as well,” Hevalow said. “... I've loved UFC since I was little. I always tell people, if I wasn't a professional bill rider, I'd be a UFC fighter.”

Hevalow and his Outlaws teammates are set to headline a Professional Bull Riders, or PBR, Teams event Thursday at the T-Mobile Center in downtown Kansas City, Missouri.

It’s the first event out of the chute in a new concept called the TKO Takeover.

TKO, which is the parent company of UFC and WWE, acquired PBR earlier this year and is bundling them together in a single action-packed weekend for the first time in Kansas City.

On the heels of the PBR Teams event, the T-Mobile Center will host UFC Fight Night on Saturday and WWE Raw on Monday.

“The minds behind TKO have this vision,” PBR Director of Live Events Luke Kaufman said. “I think there's a lot of synergies between PBR, UFC and WWE, and I think this will be a proof of concept to see how the fan bases cross over.”

If the three-events-in-five-days spectacle is a success, TKO may decide to replicate in other cities and other years.

There’s an element of toughness that permeates PBR, UFC and WWE, but it also carries over to Kaufman’s 50-member crew, which kickstarted the logistical challenge of staging three glitzy spectator events in five days.

“WWE will have their talent for Raw, UFC will have the fighters on their card, we've got the best bull riders in the world, but it's behind that,” Kaufman said. “There's three unique production groups that are the best at what they do. It's really cool for us, for the first time, to kind of all be together in one place.”

PBR’s production team set up its stages and rigging, 1.5 million pounds of dirt was trucked in and smoothed out on the T-Mobile Center floor, and pens were built to move 55 bulls through Thursday evening.

“Without them, we wouldn't have a job,” Hevalow said. “We wouldn’t get to travel the world and ride bulls professionally — just get to show up and do the cool part and ride the bulls. Those guys bust their butts all night and all day to haul equipment in, put it up, take it down, move it to the next event and repeat again.”

That same crew will have to tear everything down Friday morning, so the UFC crew can set up its iconic octagon for Saturday’s fights before another changeover Sunday to build out the ring and stage for WWE.

They hope all that effort is worth it.

“We were so excited to hear about the idea and then to be the first in the ring, if you will, to host this three-event weekend,” Kansas City Sports Commission President and CEO Kathy Nelson said. “I think they'll really appreciate what Kansas City brings to the table.”