2014 PFR Overall Winner: Ezekial Mora
The results have been verified and Ezekial Mora of Wiggins, Colorado, is the winner of the 2014 Ram 3500 Dually Truck awarded for having the winning team in the 2014 version of Pro Fantasy Rodeo game for the Wrangler National Finals Rodeo in Las Vegas in December. Mora, 22, is a PRCA, PBR and Extreme Bull Riding competitor whose PFR team called “Mora4E” earned $883,485.42 to best the second place team “BlackjackLobo” owned by Ronda Holwell with team earnings were $838,404.34.
Excited to win the new truck, Mora explained that as with other ProFantasy Rodeo winners, he and his girlfriend Kolby Bright had heard of the ProFantasy Rodeo but had never played the game. They studied the preview magazine they’d received, logged onto the website at www.ProfantasyRodeo.com, built a team and paid the $89 fee. Since Mora was familiar with the rough stock riders, he picked those contestants, and Bright studied the results from last year and picked some who had been successful in the past. They figured they had as good a chance as anyone at winning a share of the $165,000 purse, and they were right.
As the game states, each PFR player is given a $550,000 salary budget to purchase one rodeo competitor (or two for the team roping) from each of the seven events. Competitors are assigned a price according to how they were ranked in the world standings at the end of the season qualifying them for competition in the WNFR.
“We decided which events we were going to spend the most money on and we also considered which veterans had been to the NFR in the past and how well they’d performed in picking our teams,” stated Mora.
Their winning team “Mora4E2,” consisted of bareback rider Bobby Mote, steer wrestler Luke Branquinho, team ropers Aaron Tsinigine and Clay O’Brien Cooper, saddle bronc rider Jake Wright, tie-down roper Cody Ohl, barrel racer Fallon Taylor, and bull rider Sage Kimzey.
“It’s a lot of fun and keeps you really excited and motivated about watching the national finals,” said Mora. “My girlfriend woke me up at midnight after the 8th round and told me our team was at the top. After that, it was just lots of stress and worry hoping it would hold on until the end. Boy! Was I excited! I never won anything like that before!”
Said Mora, “I’m going to play Profantasy Rodeo again next year. Everyone should try it—even if it is your first time. Look what happened when we did! The price is reasonable and it sure is fun to be involved. And I’m going to do my best to win a spot in the top 15 in the bull riding for 2015, then next year people can put me on their team. That would be awesome.”
Since its inception into the rodeo world in 2003, Pro Fantasy Rodeo has served as the Professional Rodeo Cowboys Association’s official fantasy game and has paid out over 1.4 million in prizes and payouts during the past 12 years. PFR paid out more than $165,000 in cash and prizes from the 2014 December WNFR game. Whereas Mora was the Grand Prize Winner of the Main Game, Grand Prize Winner of the Daily Game, was Brandon Bowers of Haskell, OK, who won a 2014 Polaris Ranger.