Round Seven

An eliminator pen of bulls threw down with prejudice almost all of the best bull riders in the world Wednesday during seventh round competition at the Wrangler National Finals Rodeo in Las Vegas. The sentiment of the night was best put forth by Tyler Willis who when asked if he was alright said: “Yeah, I didn’t stay on him long enough to get hurt.” Team Wyoming’s Clayton Savage was one of only two that held a seat to the buzzer and things got really intense at the close of Clayton’s eight.

Legging it Out

The early bird caught the worm and the worm was Clayton Savage – a Casper, WY man now living in Cheyenne. He lived through many dangerous moments last night after successfully taking the bull called “Early Bird” to a tick of the required eight seconds. It was then that the Thomas & Mack Center crowd, some of whom had gotten up to leave, became – as one – glued to the scene. The word precarious comes to mind. Imagine being stuck, leg up, on eighteen hundred pounds of hardcore four-hooved, two-horned, tail-whipping, snot-blowing ANIMAL:

SMIQTX613C157C-483A-42D0-94AD-BB7E92A28575.mp4

The only clear signs of a tortuous tussle were a ripped shirt and a big bruise on the Wyoming-tough bull rider’s left butt cheek. Savage told us that to make matters pungent from the start his bull’s tail came around and whacked Clayton’s nose on the first jump. “That was stinky,” Savage said. He’s the proud owner of a nearly new Econoline van and will now have a fresh $30K to put toward it – that and a new bull rope. O, and a nice Christmas for his Mom and fiancé.


Dusty Tuckness getting iced at Justin Sports Medicine

 

Meeteetse, Wyoming bullfighter Dusty Tuckness spends a lot of his down time scooping bags of ice from the machine in the Justin Sports Medicine healing room on the ground floor of the T&M Center. He was there last night long after rodeo fans were out of the building.









In addition to a great bullfighter, Dusty is an extremely gifted analyst. He outlined for us what we will henceforth refer to as, no not just angry, but the Savage Bird incident:

Dusty Wed.mp4

Powder River Rodeo Co. of Riverton has an Oklahoma offshoot called D&H Cattle so the most exciting and dangerous moments of this year’s national finals thus far were brought to us Wyoming-on-Wyoming (WOW) style. “Early Bird” owner Hank Franzen shared a few moments with us after the rodeo:

SMIQTX9CE85E34-7D72-4C1A-81D4-5BAB5312E637.mp4