The bucking stops here!?

The point of longing is to get all the horses shenanigans out of the way to begin with. It is perfectly normal to do that, as bucking in the round pen is far better than bucking when your on their back. Also, horses are all varied on skills while one horse may be good at barrels, another is good at jumping, so it's futile to compare the two, and it sound like your friend is really annoying and has an inferiority complex.