Inside a locker room with the Carolina flag hanging on the wall, one cowboy stood still — head bowed, buckle in hand, tears caught in the corners of his smile. Around him, popcorn flew through the air as his teammates laughed, shouted and hugged, the sound of champagne bottles popping still echoing from center stage of T-Mobile Arena. But Clay Guiton didn’t move. He just stared at the buckle — the one he’d dreamed about since 2016, when he watched his now teammate and veteran leader Cooper Davis carry his buckle out of T-Mobile Arena.
It was the same dream he’d spoken about just a day earlier, when asked what it meant to finally ride under the bright lights of Las Vegas — the same arena where he once sat in the stands as a kid, wide-eyed and dreaming. “I’ve wanted to be here my whole life, and might as well make it count,” he said then, a grin spreading across his face, equal parts confidence and disbelief. For the 20-year-old from North Carolina, that childhood dream wasn’t a wish anymore. It was real — and it was shining back at him from the face of a gold buckle.
The kid who once watched from the stands was now the 2025 PBR Teams Championship MVP, leading his hometown Carolina Cowboys to their first league title. He went a perfect 5-for-5 on the weekend — three rides on Sunday alone — and helped Carolina cap a postseason run that embodied everything the team stands for: loyalty, belief and faith. This was the moment he had visualized since he first tied his hand into the rope, the one he’d chased through every high and low of his young career.
Guiton’s road to that moment wasn’t easy. Just a year earlier, he was wearing different colors — an Oklahoma Wildcatters jersey — still searching for his footing. Then came the trade — and everything changed. “If you really look at my stats, it almost looks like getting traded helped me,” he said. “I got traded and won the event that weekend and went on a tear ever since… That little fire under me, that’s what I needed.” From that point on, he was unstoppable — finishing top six in the world, fourth in the regular-season MVP race and ultimately standing atop the sport in Las Vegas as the Teams Championship MVP.
It did — in full. Guiton wrapped the regular season ranked fourth in the MVP race, covering 22 of 31 outs with an 85.14-point ride average, accounting for 28.9% of Carolina’s total points and tying the longest ride streak in Teams history at 10 straight. He hadn’t cut his hair since that streak began — and he wasn’t about to before Vegas. “I haven't cut it since then,” he said with a grin earlier this season, superstition meeting swagger.
The swagger became substance in Vegas. Friday night, Carolina came out firing, posting a perfect 5-for-5 to advance out of the opening round. Jess Lockwood, the two-time world champion who’s seen every high and low in this sport, looked rejuvenated. Cooper Davis, steady as ever, set the tone. But it was Guiton — the youngest Cowboy — who began to separate himself. In every meeting, every moment, his focus was electric. You could see it building ride after ride — the intensity in his eyes sharpening, his confidence growing as he got closer to gold. He could feel it, smell it, taste it. He wasn’t just riding bulls; he was riding momentum.
By championship Sunday, the Carolina Cowboys were in the fight of their season — tied with the Arizona Ridge Riders after five frames in the semifinals. It would come down to one more extra out. “I really didn’t care which bull it was,” Guiton said. “I wanted that. I wanted to be in that situation. I wanted to have the weight of the team’s season on my back and get us through that.”
The bull was Milestone. The moment — his.
When the gate cracked, Guiton exploded out of the chute with perfect form and control. As the clock hit eight, he pointed to his team before he even dismounted, chest high, a visible swagger in every movement. He rubbed his chest as if to say, “Bow that chest big.” It was a phrase the team had come to know — one of his favorite sayings, often followed with a laugh and the follow-up phrase: “Big chest, big nuts.”
The ride was worth 88 points — and it became an instant piece of PBR Teams Championship history. Carolina had just won the first overtime game in league history, punching its ticket to Sunday’s title round. In the stands, his mother, Brandy Carey, jumped and screamed, waving a Carolina blue and white pom-pom as she broke down in joyful disbelief, tears spilling down her cheeks. Later, Guiton smiled at the memory. “She couldn’t say much, but she said, ‘I can’t believe it.’”
That ride changed everything.
By Sunday afternoon, Clay Guiton had become the heartbeat of the Carolina Cowboys — a team powered by faith, family and the unwavering belief that resilience wins in the end. When the championship game began, that belief was tested. Carolina, ranked fifth entering the postseason, faced the No. 7-seed Missouri Thunder, a team that had shocked the top-seeded Florida Freedom the night before. But inside T-Mobile Arena, the Cowboys carried a quiet confidence — the kind that comes from belief, not bravado.
For Guiton, this was the moment everything had been building toward. Only one bull stood between him and gold, and you could see it in his eyes — the focus, the calm, the sheer intensity of a man who refused to let the moment slip away. When the chute gate opened for El Chapo, the North Carolina native delivered. Eight seconds later, he pounded his chest and nodded toward his mom in the stands, a silent message that said it all. It was the perfect punctuation to a perfect weekend — a final exclamation point on a performance that would crown him MVP.
As his boots hit the dirt, Guiton sprinted toward the arena edge, where John Crimber and Marco Rizzo — his closest friends and, in Crimber’s case, a back-to-back regular-season MVP — were waiting. They met in a rush of cheers and emotion, celebrating the culmination of a season spent pushing each other to be great. “I was in that position last year, supporting John,” Guiton said later. “He won MVP here last year, and I was sitting in the stands watching him. For him to come back and support me like that — to have him and Marco in my corner all day — it was special.” Then he added with glossy eyes, “And my family — they were all right there in the same suite. That made it even better.”
When the dust finally settled, Carolina had done what no one thought possible: a perfect weekend, capped with a 242.5–177.75 victory over Missouri. The Cowboys, after four years of heartbreak, had climbed the mountain. And their young spark had become their hero.
“Man, this means the world to me,” Guiton said, still holding his buckle as champagne settled into felt. “I got my family over here, and to not only win the world title as a team but to win the MVP of the weekend — it means the world to me. I couldn’t have asked for a better group of guys to do it with. We had our ups and downs, but we came together and did it when it counted the most. And that’s why we’re the champs.”
For Guiton, the moment was even sweeter because of how he got there. He’d been the kid in the stands, dreaming of riding in Las Vegas. He’d been traded, questioned, underestimated. But when the lights were brightest, he was the one every Cowboy turned to. “I really felt no pressure in that moment. I felt more pressure Friday night, starting things off really, going into that bonus round or tiebreaker game I had, I was just pumped up. I felt like I knew what I was capable of and what I was going to do. And we got it done.”
In the end, Guiton’s story wasn’t just about a gold buckle — it was about growth, about faith, about proving that heart and hard work can turn a trade into a career-defining run. Back in the locker room, as his teammates doused head coach Jerome Davis in popcorn and Tiffany Davis — the team mom, wife, spiritual leader and backbone of the Cowboys — wiped tears from her face, Guiton sat in silence for a moment, letting it all sink in.
“I had to step up today — and I did,” said it all.
In the corner of that same locker room, the chaos still reverberating off the walls, Clay Guiton’s mind was finally quiet. He finally exhaled, rubbed the gold buckle with his thumb, smiled again and looked up.
This time, he didn’t have to dream about it. He was living it.
Photo courtesy of Bull Stock Media