Riders will have two chances to earn an extra $10,000 this weekend at the Mike White Invitational Touring Pro Division event at Burton Coliseum in Lake Charles, La.

All they have to do is accomplish something no one has done since October 2009: ride the rankest bull in the world, Bushwacker.

The leading contender for 2011 World Champion Bull has earned the highest bull score at all eight events he’s attended this year. In his last outing, at the J.W. Hart PBR Challenge on May 28, he dispatched J. B. Mauney in 4 seconds and was marked 46 points.

“That bull is one of the most outstanding bulls I’ve seen for a long, long time,” said Mike White, who rode Bushwacker’s former ranch mate, Troubadour, for 95.75 points in 2008, before retiring in early 2010. “He is, in my opinion, the bucking bull of the year.”

Action gets underway at 7:30 p.m. on Friday and Saturday nights. The winner each evening will have the opportunity to ride Bushwacker. If he makes the whistle – Dustin Elliott came the closest this season at 6.57 seconds – he will receive an additional $10,000.

“Hopefully, whoever wins the round steps up to the plate and takes the match,” White said. “They asked me if I’d get on him, and I told them they couldn’t get me on a bull, especially that one. He’s definitely one of the rankest bulls I’ve seen.”

Some of PBR’s top up-and-coming bovines will also be on display. Both nights, which are actually separate competitions, are ABBI Classic events for 3- and 4-year-old bulls. An ABBI Futurity for 2-year-olds will be staged on Friday at 9 a.m. A breeders’ sale will be conducted on Saturday morning at 9.

Top Classic bulls include season leader Bad Blake, No. 4 Poker Face, No. 5 Black Widow, No. 6 V-5 and No. 7 Back Bender.

Mauney, the only man to ride eight bulls at the PBR World Finals (2009), headlines the contingent of riders. He will be joined by Caleb Sanderson, Kolt Donaldson, Josh Faircloth, Elliott Jacoby, Ned Cross and 2009 Rookie of the Year Cody Nance, among others.

Mauney, ranked seventh in the world, is 0-for-3 vs. Bushwacker this season. The 1,600-pound animal was marked a season-high 47.75 points when he Robson Palermo in January.

Because Julio Moreno owns 51 percent of Bushwacker – to Richard Oliveira’s 49 percent – Moreno makes the final decision on when and where his prized bull will buck. He said his friendship with White, who earned more than $1.47 million in his PBR career, was a major reason he asked Kent Cox to take him to take him from Dublin, Texas, to Lake Charles this weekend.

“When he was 95 and three-quarters on Troubadour, we made some t-shirts up, so his bull riding has those t-shirts of Troubadour,” Moreno said. “So that kind of got us closer.”

Cox takes care of Bushwacker most of the year and keeps him in tip-top shape.

“Bushwacker’s doing good,” Moreno said. “Kent told me that he’s got so much go, he really wants to go at it.”

— by Chris McManes