Randy Taylor – 1985 Bareback Qualifier

By Patrick Everson

Forty years ago, in December 1985, Las Vegas hosted the Wrangler National Finals Rodeo for the first time. It was a year full of firsts for both the NFR and Vegas.

Among those firsts is this: In bareback bronc riding, the first event of the night, Randy Taylor was the first cowboy out of the chute.

Of the 100-plus contestants at the Thomas & Mack Center that December night, only Taylor has that claim to fame. He christened the first Vegas Wrangler NFR.

And he remembers it fondly.

“It was exciting. I mean, this place was buzzing,” Taylor said during a Tuesday night interview in the Wrangler NFR media room, ahead of the sixth go-round. “It was my first NFR, something that I’d dreamed about since I was 13.”

Further, 1985 marked the first time Taylor qualified for the NFR – he narrowly earned the 15^th and final bareback slot. And it was the only time he got to Vegas. In the decade or so that he competed professionally, of all the years he could’ve qualified for the NFR, he only did so in the first year in Vegas.

“An Oklahoma Cherokee cowboy on a Canadian horse,” Taylor recalled while describing the ride. “That horse bucked and really, really kicked. He ducked and dodged with every jump.”

Taylor took a respectable third place in the first go-round. But he felt he deserved better.

“I have a professionally biased opinion. But I thought I should’ve won the round. That horse went on to win the Bareback Horse of the Year and Saddle Bronc Horse of the Year, one of only three horses to ever do that.”

Taylor noted that the cowboys and cowgirls who qualified for that first NFR in Vegas were a little uncertain of what the future held in this new venue and new city. But any skepticism didn’t last long.

“It lasted until that first round of paychecks was handed out, and they were three times more than the paychecks in Oklahoma City,” he said.

Taylor went on to become a chiropractor by the late 1980s – he certainly had the back-pain experience for that gig – but then in the ‘90s returned to rodeo as an announcer. It’s something he still does to this day at a variety of rodeos, including the Indian National Finals Rodeo.

“This sport has a rubber-band effect,” he said of getting snapped back into it. “The people in this sport are family. The integrity and camaraderie are very high.”

Comparatively, the money these days is light years beyond what Taylor and his peers earned in their battles. The 2025 Wrangler NFR purse is more than $17.5 million – $13.5 million for the contestants, $4 million for the stock contractors.

Taylor is among the many who celebrate how far the Wrangler NFR has come.

“Each round winner in each event this year pays out more than I won the whole year in 1985,” Taylor said, noting nightly go-round winners pocket $36,668. “And the average pays almost three times that. I am elated by that.

“The top 15 all make over a hundred grand in the regular season. Back in my day, only the top few made money. Now, they can make a living and raise a family. And we have some fine young men and women in this sport.”

Still, none of them can say they rode the first horse in the first event of the first NFR in Las Vegas.

“I wish I would’ve gone 15^th. That would’ve meant that I was No. 1 in the world standings,” Taylor said. “But it’s fun trivia, and I never get tired of hearing it.”