Steer Wrestling • Inducted 1979 Homer Pettigrew holds the steer wrestling record for both total and consecutive world titles at six and four, respectively. He won his six within eight years, and in 1947 and 1949-50, he was second in the world, which made him the dominant steer wrestler for a...
Contract Personnel • Inducted 1979 His peers, professional rodeo cowboys and audiences across North America considered Wick Peth to be the greatest rodeo bullfighter of all. Making no attempt to be funny, his costume was more functional than clownish. Born on April 15, 1930, in Mount Vernon, Wash., Peth was a...
Livestock • Inducted 1979 1977 was the first year that a trophy was awarded to the season’s best steer wrestling horse by vote of the top 30 money winners in the event. Their choice in 1977-78 was a bay gelding named Peanuts, owned by C.R. Jones of Lakeside, Calif. Purchased off...
Bull Riding • Inducted 1979 Considered the strongest man ever to ride bulls in professional rodeo, George Paul once made qualified rides on 79 bulls in a row. In 1968 he won the world bull riding championship. Born March 5, 1947, in Del Rio, Texas, and the heir to a million-acre...
Tie-Down Roping • Inducted 1979 Between 1956 and 1969, Dean Oliver won eight world tie-down roping championships, dominating professional tie-down roping as no other man before or since. He also won three straight world all-around championships. Oliver, born Nov. 17, 1929, in Dodge City, Kan., was a man before he had...
Contract Personnel • Inducted 1979 George Mills is credited with being one of the first bullfighter/clowns to hurdle a bull in the arena. Mills approached the bull from an angle while running full speed. When he got the bull’s attention, the animal lowered its head to hook him, and Mills became...
Team Roping • Inducted 1979 Team roper John Miller was no stranger to rodeo and proved himself by winning two consecutive team roping titles in the early 1970s. The nephew of Ben Johnson, world champion team roper in 1953, and great-nephew of Ben Johnson, Sr., famous early-day roper, Miller took to...
Tie-Down Roping • Inducted 1979 Don McLaughlin, born Oct. 24, 1927, in Chester, Pa., literally grew up in rodeo arenas, working as a trick roper as a child. He went on to win four consecutive world championships in tie-down roping and added a fifth title three years later. He also won...
Steer Roping • Inducted 1979 Clark McEntire, who has three world titles to his credit, has said everything he has accumulated in life has come from professional rodeo. In the early 1950s, McEntire won a car, and with $500 he had saved, he bought 40 acres of land south of Kiowa,...
Steer Wrestling • Inducted 1979 Harley May, born June 2, 1926, in Deming, N.M., won the world steer wrestling championship title in 1952, his first year in the Rodeo Cowboys Association. He won a total of three world crowns, and 26 years after his first one, he was still a top...
