Steer Wrestling • Inducted 1979 Jack Roddy, born Oct. 3, 1937, in San Francisco, competed in his first RCA rodeo at the age of 14 and won $90 in the wild horse race. Early participation in rodeo was not unusual for the youngster who grew up on the family ranch near...
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...
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...
Steer Wrestling • Inducted 1979 John W. Jones. Sr., born June 26, 1932, in Fresno, Calif., excelled on the PRCA’s biggest stage, winning the National Finals Rodeo’s aggregate title three consecutive years and a record four times overall. The Rookie of the Year in 1956, Jones’ world bulldogging title came in...
Steer Wrestling • Inducted 1979 Although he never saw a rodeo until he was in high school, Roy Duvall of Boynton, Okla., learned fast and won three world titles. Duvall first entered bareback and bull riding when he began competing, but he soon discovered that his real talent was in steer...
Steer Wrestling • Inducted 1979 One of only three men to have won four or more steer wrestling world titles, James Bynum of Waxahachie, Texas, pursued world titles if the weather wasn’t just right. “Big Jim,” like his father before him, farmed cotton south of Dallas. When it was hot and...
Steer Wrestling • Inducted 1979 Hugh Bennett influenced the sport of rodeo in and out of the arena. Bennett, born Sept. 19, 1905, in Knox City, Texas, won the steer wrestling world title in 1932 and the steer roping title in 1938. He became the first secretary/treasurer of the Cowboys’ Turtle...
Steer Wrestler • Inducted 2023 Luke Branquinho was raised on a seven-generation family ranch in Los Alamos, California. John and Brandy Branquinho’s third son followed the lead of big brothers, Tony and Casey, and grew up roping. He started wrestling steers at 11, with the help of family friend John Black,...
Steer Wrestling • Inducted 2019 Dean Gorsuch eased into professional rodeo. The Nebraskan spent five years as a pipeline welder for Kinder Morgan and a weekend circuit contender before jumping into fulltime rodeo in 2005. That year, he finished sixth in the world. By the end of 2006, Gorsuch had a...
Steer Wrestling • Inducted 2017 Tommy Puryear qualified for the National Finals Rodeo nine times, eight of which were consecutive, from 1971-78, and then again in 1983. The Texas bulldogger also won the world title in 1974 and the NFR average crown in 1976. He developed his winning style of bulldogging by studying...
