For steer wrestler Dalton Massey, rodeo has been a part of his life since he was young. His grandfather was a bareback rider and his grandmother ran barrels and while they mostly stuck to circuit rodeoing, if you ask Massey, it sounded like a pretty good way to live. His father steer wrestled and his mother and wife both barrel race.
Massey has led the World Standings for almost the entire 2023 season.
“Usually I get home from the winter and I need to go to work. The last couple of years I came home and just picked up a hammer and went to work. I enjoy working, I’ve always thought that’s something that makes you really want to win,” Massey said.
Since 2019, he has hit the rodeo road hard and it has paid off. After a few years of barely missing the cut to get into the winter rodeos or finishing just outside the Top 15, Massey decided to take some time off after getting married in the fall of 2022.
“It was hard, you know, I went home and I was broke and I went to work last fall. It’s pretty easy to get down on yourself after that but luckily my wedding was coming up and I had that to look forward to. My wife was positive about everything and she wanted me to do it and I just kind of got the fire going again,” he said.
With that, Massey made one significant change to his lifestyle and that was the gym.
“I wanted to put on a little bit more weight, I’ve always been kind of a skinny kid and I wanted to get a little bit bigger so I could compete with some of them guys but I think that’s working out,” he said.
To add to it, Massey’s horse Rodney is taking him to the pay window regularly. His grandparents raised him and Massey broke him before his cousin started him on the barrels. Rodney bucked his way through being a barrel horse before Massey made a bull dogging horse out of him and now, the palomino had Massey looking forward to more wins.
That goes right along with Massey’s goals to have his name in the record books as he looks towards his first ever National Finals Rodeo.
