Bull Riding • Inducted 1979 Don Gay won four consecutive world championships, 1974-77, the PRCA Season Championship 1976-78, and then followed with another three consecutive world championships, 1979-81. Since he won his last world crown in 1984, Gay has held the record with eight bull riding world titles. Experts in the...
Contract Personnel • Inducted 1979 Known to all in rodeo as the “Kajun Kid,” Dudley Gaudin left Baton Rouge, La., at the age of 15 to ride bareback horses and bulls with a Wild West show. When the show broke up, he went to Texas to enter rodeos as a bull...
Contract Personnel • Inducted 1979 He was the first professional rodeo barrelman/clown. Extremely short-legged and slow, Fulkerson needed a sanctuary in large arenas, so he built a barrel reinforced on the outside with old automobile tire casings. His frantic dashes to the barrel and plunges into it inspired awe and applause...
Tie-Down Roping • Inducted 1979 Glen Franklin won three world championships in four years. Born March 18, 1936, in House, N.M., Franklin carried a rope when he was still wearing diapers and put his loop on any dog, chicken or human that got within range. A natural athlete, he was on...
Tie-Down Roping • Inducted 1979 Troy Fort learned to rope in world-class competition and won two world championships after coaching by the great Jake McClure. Fort won his championships on the famous Baldy that he bought from Katherine Burk after the untimely death of her husband, Clyde. Although Baldy was famous...
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 Roping • Inducted 1979 With his unconventional technique, Sonny Davis was credited with putting some “zip” into the single steer roping, which until that time was something of a perfectionist event. Davis, born Jan. 2, 1935, in Kenna, N.M., handled himself with catlike quickness and superb coordination, despite his 6-foot-3...
Saddle Bronc Riding • Inducted 1979 Shawn Davis, a three-time world champion saddle bronc rider, has devoted much of his life to the sport of rodeo. Davis won his first title in 1965 and then captured back-to-back titles in 1967-68. In 1969, he was leading the world standings when a bronc...
Stock Contractor • Inducted 1979 Rodeo producer throughout the Rocky Mountain region for 27 years, Leo Cremer established the greatest string of bucking horses ever assembled under a single ownership. So deep was the talent of his horses that many of them never bucked more than once or twice a year....
Tie-Down Roping • Inducted 1979 Roy Cooper jumped out of the box, winning the world tie-down roping championship and Rookie of the Year honors the first year he became a full-time professional in 1976. Born Nov. 13, 1955, in Hobbs, N.M., Cooper was severely afflicted with asthma as a child, which...
