The Untold Truth Of Dude Perfect's Tyler Toney
According to Texas A&M Today, the Dude Perfect YouTube channel started back in 2009 when college students Coby and Cory Cotton (twin brothers), Garrett Hilbert, Cody Jones, Tyler Toney, and Sean Townsend filmed themselves doing basketball trick shots while betting over sandwiches. Their first video went viral practically overnight, and they've amassed a ton of fame and success over the past 13 years. They now own and operate several YouTube channels (Including Whistle and Dude Perfect Plus), with over 57 million subscribers on the original channel alone, have a highly-rated mobile game in the App Store, and even made it to the mainstream entertainment world with the 2016 debut on the CMT Network of "The Dude Perfect Show."
Out of everyone, Toney is arguably one of the more high-profile individuals who make up the Dude Perfect group. He's very active on Instagram, where you can see that he's a loving family man, married to Bethany Toney with three kids, Barrett, Colton, and Rhett. While he's pretty public about his life and his involvement with the Dude Perfect business, there's a little more to Toney than meets the eye. So let's take a look at some untold truths which fans may not know about "the bearded guy" from Dude Perfect.
He's the most successful competitor in the Dude Perfect squad
The Dude Perfect team spends a lot of their time competing against each other in "battles," which are based on the original competitions that spawned the channel. These can be anything from a demolition derby battle to a giant version of Pictionary. According to the official Dude Perfect wiki, Toney has the most battle wins out of the entire Dude Perfect ensemble cast. He has 25 solo battle wins, which is a lot in comparison to his fellow cohorts. Next in line would be Garrett Hilbert with 14 battle wins, Cody Jones with 9 battle wins, and Cory Cotton with 7 wins.
The battle videos are some of the highest-viewed videos on their main YouTube channel, with their most recent airsoft battle video amassing over 11 million views in under two months, as of this writing. In addition to the sports-based competitions, Toney has also participated in (and performed well in) game show-style competitions that are featured on the channel. Some of these include their dare challenge "Wheel Unfortunate," as well as "Cool Not Cool," which are both a part of their "Dude Perfect: Overtime" series.
Animals are a big part of his life
First and foremost, Toney is an avid hunter and fisherman. There are pictures of him all over his Instagram with fish, ducks, turkeys, geese, and larger game. From reading some of the descriptions on these posts, it appears as though he does his due diligence as far as getting permits, sticking to quotas, and following rules like "letting younger bucks grow another year," as well as teaching the values of responsible and sustainable hunting practices to his kids. Even for fans of his who may be opposed to hunting in principle, he at least appears to be making the effort to do it as ethically as possible.
But Toney doesn't just hunt. He participates in other animal conservation efforts too. As recently as May of 2021, he traveled with the Dude Perfect crew to South Africa and participated in some rhino rescue with the Rhino 911 organization. In total, they helped tranquilize five animals so that veterinarians could get close enough to treat them for injuries sustained from illegal poachers. Such efforts might be having a positive effect, as some species of rhino in South Africa are rising in numbers and are getting closer to being taken off the Critically Endangered list (via WWF).
He admits he likes the controversy
Social media has been picking apart the Dude Perfect videos for years, like this particular Reddit thread, accusing them of using CGI and other tricks in order to fake their shots. It got so heated at one point that the group went and did an interview on The Today Show to address the controversy, and they emphatically repeated that they do not edit their videos or fake their trick shots in any way.
Obviously, that won't stop people from leveling criticism at the group, but Toney doesn't seem very bothered by this. In fact, when people first started questioning the veracity of their videos, he "took it as a compliment," as he explains in his "Get to know Tyler Toney" YouTube video. "If people are thinking that there's no way it can actually be done in real life, then we're obviously doing something right." Their millions of subscribers would probably say the same thing.
He's literally a millionaire — and a charitable one, at that
It's hard to say exactly how much Toney is worth, personally. He's been collaborating for years with his four other YouTube partners, which means that his net worth is intrinsically tied in with theirs. Even when trying to guess how much the group as a whole is worth, the numbers can vary. He's potentially worth around $10 million (according to Celebrity Net Worth), if you take their estimated net worth and divide it evenly five ways. Other websites like Wealthy Gorilla suggest a more conservative group net worth of $30 million, but that's still nothing to sneeze at.
But the Dude Perfect group aren't just wasting their money on frivolous purchases. As we've covered on Looper before, all five Dude Perfect members are pretty charitable dudes, with Toney being far from the exception. In addition to flying to South Africa to help endangered species, he's joined his professional partners in donating to organizations like Charity: Water, Compassion International, and even the Make-A-Wish Foundation.
He's in the Guinness Book of World Records
It's no secret that the Dude Perfect guys love taking their challenges to the next level, especially when world records are involved. Currently, Toney reigns supreme as a four-time Guinness World Record holder just on his own, not even counting the group awards that they have all earned collectively. His first award was won on January 23, 2017, when Toney threw a football into a basketball hoop from 50 yards away without even using the backboard. He added a second world record to his resume the very next day, after successfully throwing another football through a hoop from 99 feet in the air (99'8", to be precise). They published a video of the feat on YouTube a few days later. But this was just in 2017 alone.
The following year in October, Toney set what is possibly the slimiest world record of all when he crushed 45 eggs with his toes in 30 seconds. The year after that, in 2019, he won himself another award plaque for successfully slicing a massive amount of citrus fruit in a short amount of time. He cut through 66 lemons and limes in 30 seconds for one of their "Overtime" videos. As of this writing, none of these records have been surpassed by any challengers, and it should be interesting to see what sorts of records he and his buddies try to set in the future.