Two College Wrestlers Were Mauled By A Grizzly Bear Over The Weekend, Fought It Off, And Survived To Tell The Story
A college wrestler from a small Wyoming school helped his teammate survive a grizzly mauling over the weekend by trying to wrestle the massive bear off his friend, eventually drawing a more brutal attack to himself.
Brady Lowry, of Cedar City, Utah, suffered a broken arm and puncture wounds in the initial attack after they surprised the bear while searching for antlers shed by elk and deer in the Shoshone National Forest. "The bear came running out of the trees. I didn't even see it until it was right in front of me, but I heard the crashing," Lowry told ABC News in an interview that aired Wednesday on "Good Morning America." "The only thing I could yell is: 'Bear! Bear!' I just knew I had to protect my head and just kind of fight for life, you know -- it's life or death."
His teammate, Kendell Cummings, of Evanston, Wyoming, tried to stop the attack on Lowry by yelling, kicking and hitting the bear and pulling on its fur. "I didn't want to lose my friend. It was bad," Cummings told the Deseret News. "There was a big ol' bear on top of him. I could have run and potentially lost a friend or get him off and save him."
The bear quickly turned its fury onto Cummings. "It knocked me onto the ground and then, with its head, pushed me on the ground all the way up against the trees and then kind of pinned me up there and it was attacking me," Cummings told ABC News. "I was putting my hands in its mouth and stuff, so it wouldn't be chewing on my neck and everything." Cummings said the bear eventually walked away but was gone only briefly. "I heard the bear kind of grunting behind me, and I heard it walking," Cummings said. "Then I saw it again, and it came and attacked me again."
What an amazing story of heroism, grit, and toughness coming out of North-West Wyoming. Fighting a bear is something of legend that not many men are ever able to tell the tale of. I mean, these former college wrestlers literally grappled a bear. If Khabib wrestled a bear cub as a child and did this well in the UFC, these guys wrestled an adult Grizzley bear and survived. They make Khabib look like a bitch.
This story of perseverance and survival in the face of insurmountable odds. Even Leo Dicaprio in The Revenant needed a gun to survive the bear, but these guys literally fought the bear bare-handed (no intended) and actually lived out this scenario.
This story is crazy coming up after this video that surfaced earlier this week.
I mean, bears are getting ready to hibernate which means they are hungry and getting rowdy. I guess this is trending this time of year. Wild that humans are still taking Ws over these mega predators. The top of the food chain gotta flex when it can, thanks in part to some of the best teamwork recorded by mankind.
Two other teammates, August Harrison and Orrin Jackson, helped badly injured Cummings off the mountain, carrying him at times. Lowry was able to walk by himself. Both ended up at Billings (Montana) Clinic Hospital, where Cummings underwent surgery. Neither man was listed as a patient there Tuesday, hospital spokesperson Zach Benoit said.
"Me and [Cummings] would both be dead if it wasn't all four of us -- if it wasn't for [Cummings] pulling the hair, if it wasn't for [Harrison] running up and scaring the bear away and not coming back for more," Brady Lowry told KSL. "It was a team effort. We love each other. We're going to be best friends for the rest of our lives because of this."