COLUMN: Joe Hawk

     The area around his right eye was purple. Two deep lacerations cut across his upper right cheek, a nickel-sized gash of skin and tissue missing just below. His lips were bruised and puffy.
      He complained of being occasionally light-headed and dizzy.
      What's more, he had a slightly sprained right ankle.
      If it sounded as if champion bull rider Terry Don West was in a world of hurt Saturday night, he was. But his brain was working properly -- and that fact allowed him to make the sane decision to not challenge the sport's all-time rankest bull, Bodacious.
      Believe me, if you had seen West close up, you would agree it was the right decision -- the only decision.
      What was supposed to be an extra attraction to the final round of the Wrangler Bull Riders Only Championships at the Thomas & Mack Center and the culmination of a national hour-long special on Fox Television was canceled at the last moment when West, his manager and event doctors agreed it wouldn't be safe.
      It was not as if West, the 1996 National Finals Rodeo bull riding champion, needed to tempt fate a second time Saturday night. Just minutes earlier, the 31-year-old resident of Henryetta, Okla., posted a 91 on Wooly Bully to capture the BRO's world title and first-place prize of $287,500.
      What good is winning more than one-quarter of a million dollars if you have to spend it on doctors to surgically rebuild your face? At least the facial injuries West already suffered, which were caused Thursday when a bull named Bananarama reared on his hind legs and pinned his head to the chute, will eventually heal.
      A ride on 9-year-old Bodacious, which would have been coming out of a 15-month retirement since breaking bones in the face of NFR competitor Scott Bredings in 1995, could be crippling, if not fatal.
      "I listen to my body a lot," West said of his decision, "and it told me not to ride."
      "Another day, another time," added his business manager, Michael Levy.
      "Coming in here tonight," West explained, "I tried to grab my bull rope and almost fell. I was getting light-headed a lot. Standing on the steps, I almost fell three times. ... I knew riding one bull tonight would be tough, but riding two -- when the second one was Bodacious -- would be nearly impossible."
      West said he was about 70 percent coming into the night's competition, but he tweaked his right ankle coming down off his championship ride, and that injury all but sealed his decision.
      His ride on Bodacious was to have been for charity, with sponsor Smoky Mountain Snuff donating $10,000 in his name to Las Vegas' Sunrise Children's Hospital. Although other riders showed interest in challenging Bodacious if West couldn't, the chief executive officer of BRO said it wasn't known whether the sponsor would have paid the money had anyone other than West been in the spotlight.
      "A lot of people like to see Bodacious buck," Shaw Sullivan said, "but the matchup was to have been Terry Don, the greatest bull rider, against Bodacious, the greatest bull. That's what the sponsor wanted, and that's what Fox wanted."
      Sullivan said he would speak to Smoky Mountain Snuff officials either today or Monday to see if they would donate the money anyway. If they don't, event sponsor Wrangler will, according to a spokeswoman for the company.
      In the end Saturday, everyone came up a winner.
      But no one more so than Terry Don West, who not only walked away with one of the largest first-place paychecks in sports but also the precious ability to walk away.
      "This was a dream night," he said, smiling through the pain.
      A bodacious night, if you will.
     
      Joe Hawk's column is published Sunday, Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday. He can be reached by e-mail at Joe_Hawk@lvrj.com.