Stevensville Bareback Jumper Richmond Champion Says Cervical Fusion ‘Got Very Well’ | Rodeo

Champion, seven-time Wrangler Rodeo National Final qualifier, recently announced on social media that he had “a severely bulging disc” in his neck which compressed his spinal cord. In the social media post, Champion said he will be out for the remainder of the PRCA season but a “full recovery” is expected.

“The operation went very well, and I have to lay still for a month and they are slowly getting back to doing things,” Champion said in the PRCA statement. “They say it’s like six months when they release you to live normally. I’m obviously in no rush to come back then, so I’m just going to wait until January 2023.”

According to the PRCA press release, Champion said he had shoulder and neck pain since the end of the 2021 season, but he was not worried about it.

“In my sport, this (pain) is nothing out of the ordinary,” Champion said in the statement. “I had the SportsMed team in San Antonio do some strength tests on me and they said I was pretty weak in a lot of areas that I shouldn’t be. They wanted to do a MRI I had the MRI (the second week of March) and it showed a disc between my C3 and C4 (vertebrae) where I had a problem.As I said the operation went very well and a full recovery is expected.

Champion finished eighth in the PRCA World Rankings last season with $188,738.74. It won $89,793 at the 2021 Wrangler NFR in December in Las Vegas. He is 16th in the standings this year with $26,726.43 in earnings.