Last Updated on July 31, 2026 10:51 am
Jerome Davis, a North Carolina native who became the first cowboy from east of the Mississippi River to win a PRCA bull riding world championship, was inducted into the 2026 ProRodeo Hall of Fame class during a ceremony July 18 in Colorado Springs, Colorado.
Davis, of Archdale, N.C., started riding bulls at age 11 and never looked back, winning the North Carolina Rodeo High School Bull Riding Championship in 1990. He went on to ride for Odessa College's rodeo team, won the college bull riding championship in 1992, and qualified for the National Finals Rodeo five straight years, from 1993 through 1997.
His signature moment came in 1995, when Davis rode nine of his 10 bulls at the National Finals Rodeo to capture both the average title and the world championship, edging out Terry Don West by just over $3,000 for the title.
On March 14, 1998, Davis was thrown from a bull during an event in Fort Worth, Texas. The fall fractured a vertebra and left him paralyzed from the chest down. Rather than step away from the sport, Davis shifted his focus to raising bucking bulls as a stock contractor and teaching bull riding schools and clinics, work that has earned him recognition as a coach of the year.
Davis was part of a 2026 Hall of Fame class that also included Western media figure Jeff Medders, 1980 steer wrestling champion Butch Myers, bullfighter Keith Isley, stock contractor Ike Sankey, tie-down roper Bobby Goodspeed, and barrel racing champions Loretta Manuel and Mary Burger, among others.
