- From an early age, J.R. Salzman had a destiny.
- I grew up in Hayward, Wisconsin,
home of the Lumberjack World Championships.
- Life here revolves around logrolling.
- I started logrolling the summer I turned six.
As a kid, it was just what you did.
In Hayward, that sort of thing was normal.
You're standing on a floating log in the water.
The object is to roll your opponent into the water.
- Announcer: Unofficially, it looks like
J.R. Salzman may have won that match.
We'll find out for you.
- Nobody could foresee what it was going to turn into.
[rock music]
- What J.R. "turned into" was a world champion.
In his hometown,
J.R. was the last man standing six times.
Six times a world champion logroller.
The awards and accomplishments kept rolling in.
- I've also won three world titles in the boom run.
I set two world records in the boom run.
When ESPN had the Great Outdoor Games, I won 14 medals,
tied for the most ever.
- Back in 2005, he earned an ESPY Award
for Best Outdoor Sports Athlete.
In bestowing the honor, ESPN called J.R.
"among the preeminent outdoors athletes of the last decade."
- In terms of lumberjack accomplishments,
you might say I'm right up there.
- And then, this happened.
- It blew me away that somebody could do this.
Yah, it clearly affected me emotionally.
I saw joining the military as doing my part.
- J.R. was deployed to Iraq to the front line.
- It was December 19, 2006.
I was the first truck on the road.
- And first in the line of danger.
[explosive sound]
- So one second, I was telling my driver to slow down.
And then the next second, I was waking up.
As I came to, after being knocked out,
I couldn't figure out
why I couldn't open the door and why my arm hurt so bad.
And I looked down and my arm was on fire.
- J.R. had been hit by an EFP -- Explosively Formed Penetrator.
- I told my gunner, I said, "Hey, get on the radio.
"Get a hold of gun truck 3
and see if you can get Doc up here."
I go, "My right arm's been blown off and
if I don't get a tourniquet on, I'm going to bleed out."
Just like I was in charge still, stayed calm.
I've had people ask me
"How did you stay so calm and collected?"
I said, "Well have you ever logrolled
"in front of 3,000 people before?
I have."
If you can handle that pressure,
you can handle getting your arm blown off.
- A medical helicopter arrived.
- Finally somebody says, "Well, how you doing?"
I said, "Oh, I'm good.
"Just looking for the other half of my arm.
Anybody seen it?"
And it hurt.
It hurt unimaginable pain.
And the doctors were like, "Yeah, we'll give you morphine."
I'm like, "No! No morphine!
I'm allergic!"
The whole room stopped.
They're like, "You're allergic?"
I go, "I'm allergic to morphine.
"Do not give me morphine.
You could kill me."
- When the shock wore off, reality set in.
- I remember they just woke me up and
I looked down and my arm was gone.
And I was just like, "What the hell?
Like what do I do now?"
Lost my right arm, half my left hand.
Acquired a traumatic brain injury
that affects my memory and my concentration.
This is a hollow, carbon fiber, super-sleek,
super-light arm, which is great unless you're a logroller.
So -- cause it makes your balance off
cause this natural arm's heavier than this one.
I can still remember getting on the log for the first time.
I taught myself how to roll again.
- Nothing was going to come easy.
And nothing was going to keep J.R.
from getting back into the water.
- There's ice on the lake?
I don't care.
I'm going to start training now.
I have logrolled in a hole in the ice.
My first year back was 2008.
And I was dealing with a lot of issues.
We all have our own demons and I was dealing with mine.
And I trained harder than I'd ever trained before.
And I had so much pressure on me to win.
Everybody wanted me to win
because they wanted that hometown hero story.
I absolutely choked.
And I rolled worse--
lost to somebody who I hadn't lost to since
I was 14 years old.
You know, it was embarrassing.
And I wanted to quit.
I said, "To hell with this sport.
I'm done."
- Just like that, this six-time world champion was done.
- I just said, "You know,
I think it's time to hang up the spikes."
And be a different kind of lumberjack and
play with wood on a different level.
- J.R. pursued his passion as an urban lumberjack.
- I was 27 when I lost my arm.
Very skilled with my hands,
I made a living with my hands building houses.
I went from being right-handed
to being left-handed,
to having only three working fingers.
I'm going to roll the dice and
I want to do what I want to do and pursue my dreams.
And a few years later, here I am.
[saw whirring]
- J.R. opened his own urban sawmill
outside of the city of Menomonie.
He took his passion for logrolling and
laser-focused it on woodworking.
- I'm entirely self-taught.
I never went to school for it.
The reality is I do everything from start to finish.
From the rough urban log, saw it, dry it,
right down to the finished piece of furniture.
My niche is slabs.
Once the slab is dry, really, the sky's the limit.
Whatever you can think up.
I can walk through here and look at all the pieces of wood.
They're like my kids.
I can tell you where they came from, when I cut them.
You do sort of brand a bit of your personality into the wood
when you work with it.
That is rewarding.
- Rewarding like logrolling had been,
but yet, something was still missing.
- I can be laying in bed at night in January and
I can start thinking about competition.
My heart's going to start beating faster.
But I thought back to my first world title
and that year I wanted to quit too.
- That's when this wounded warrior and
Purple Heart recipient had a change of heart and
thought, "Let's roll."
[rock music]
- I said, "Let's just hang on a while longer.
Give it another go."
So the following year, 2009,
it was actually pretty refreshing
because all the pressure was gone.
I could tell that people had kind of written me off.
You know like, "Oh, it's great.
"He's coming back to roll,
even though he'll never be world champion again."
You doubt it's going to happen?
Okay, challenge me.
Watch what happens.
[cheering]
I went in and proceeded to win
my 7th world title and my 1st with one arm.
It was this amazing feeling of...
you know, getting my life back in order.
[applause]
- J.R. would win three more world championships.
- Announcer: J.R. Salzman, one fall away
from taking the title for the 10th time.
[cheering]
- Announcer: And there it is, ladies and gentlemen!
- Now with ten titles, he's tied for the most ever.
- Announcer: Mr. J.R. Salzman, ladies and gentleman.
How about a hand for J.R.?
[applause]
- It's just amazing to be able to come back and roll again
after everything I've been through, losing an arm in Iraq.
Umm...
[cheering]
I had a hard time keeping it together.
I'm the only person ever missing a limb to ever win.
Not once, not twice, but four times.
[applause]
- In 2015, J.R. retired
as one of the greatest timber sports athletes ever.
- I'm going to roll until the day I die.
I'm just not going to be competing.
In hindsight,
I never thought it would turn into what it did.
You know to be one of the best logrollers
to ever walk the face of the earth.
And especially for what it's done for my life.
To be sort of that core support
and to help me get my life back together.
Bad things happen.
Things don't go your way.
Life's not fair.
Believe me, life is not fair.
Fully knowing the journey that I've been on,
I mean, I'd do it all again.
And I'm not done yet.
I'm just a small-town guy from Hayward, Wisconsin,
who wants to saw logs and play with wood and
roll on logs in the summer.