Kent Cox and Julio Moreno collect top honors at last year's ABBI Classic Finals

Kent Cox has been a factor in the bucking bull business for many years.

First he competed as a bull rider with the PRCA and the PBR. Cox actually qualified for the PBR finals, but due to an injury, he was not able to compete. Later, he teamed up with his friend Dean Wilson and they served as the dummy men at many of the top futurities, becoming most efficient at strapping on the dummies while bucking around 40 bulls per hour. Cox also has one of the top breeding programs in the country. Last, but not least, he is becoming one of the best bull haulers going, having placed the flank on the top bull of the ABBI last season, T11 Troubadour, for Julio and Cindy Moreno.

The first thing you will learn about Cox is his honesty. The man who helped raise him, and mentored him most of his adult life, is Monty Samford, who described Cox this way: “Kent Cox probably ate at my house more than his own from the time he was 15 to 18 and there is not a more honest person. In fact, he is brutally honest, and that is saying something. In an industry that has had some unpopular deals done, Kent will always be fair, and I consider him my stepson and would trust him with anything I own.”

Cox was born in the Texas panhandle and moved to Stephenville back in 1991 just to be around rodeo and bull riding. While living in the area he attended Vernon Junior College. “I wasn’t a great bull rider,” Cox said of his college days, “but made enough to get by on and enough to get to the next event. I managed to get some education and numerous broken bones along the way — you know, all the good things that go with bull riding. I had my big wreck back in the fall of 1997 where I virtually broke every bone in the right side of my face, along with losing the sight in my right eye. I knew after that wreck my riding career was over, but I had been messing with bulls for quite awhile, and thought about working on this side of the business. I had ridden my first big bull at Monty Samford’s ranch and was around livestock most of the time. I lived with Sandy Kirby while I was in school and he was heavily involved with the bucking bulls. Kirby furnished bulls to Billy Bob’s in Ft Worth for some 20 years, so I sure enough had some background in the bull business. Samford would send green bulls to me while I was still in college and we would go through them, and that is probably where I really started messing with bulls on my own. I knew early there was something I loved about messing with bulls. I can sit and watch them eat and play for hours; they just mesmerize me because they are athletes. Today, it’s my job is to make them the best athlete they can be. I don’t train them, because the bull has the ability to buck or he doesn’t, and there is nothing you can do to make him any other way. My job is to help them be the best they can with nutrition, exercise, vitamins and minerals, and try to get them to their ultimate level.”

His entry into breeding started almost a decade ago. “I bought Cowboy Cash,” he recalled, “when he was a yearling from Ronny Roach in 1999. Monty Samford owned Houdini at the time and I had seen what his calves had done. He was sired by White Sports Coat and I wanted a bull that was bred that same way. Cowboy Cash was injured early in his career and never got to meet his potential in the arena. The main reason I purchased him was to breed to him, and he has done a great job for us. He has produced five futurity champions along with What I Say owned by the Heberts, and has been used as a short go bull at PBR events. I have leased a White Water son from the Morenos and used an A6 son last season to do some crossing with my Cowboy Cash daughters.”

Cox was soon hauling and bucking outside bulls. “Samford got me my start; he is a pipe line welder and is away from his program a lot. Before his sons were able to handle his stock, I would help him haul bulls and they were doing real well. Everybody knows Samford’s program, and many would call him wanting him to haul them and he would call me and get me to haul them. It was through Samford I got to haul the Moreno’s bulls.”

“Kent did an excellent job for us,” Julio Morenoa stated, “and he took our bull (T11 Troubadour) and made a champion out of him.”

Cox responded, “T11 is a special animal who never failed to give me everything he had, and it was an unbelievable year. Hauling T11 and Charlie Bullware on your truck was amazing. Bullware was over shadowed by T11, but was one outstanding bull also. I can’t thank the people enough for trusting me with their bulls. This season, I am hauling Brian Agnew’s bull Tilta Whirl, and look for him to do well.”

When you see someone take a bull with T11’s credentials and hand him over to someone 1,500 miles from their ranch, it says volumes about Cox’s credibility, and the Morenos still fly him to the PBR events to flank their bull. “I treat everyone’s bull like they are mine,” remarked Cox. “The bulls come first and during the early years of this, the bulls ate before I did, and ate better. I am always honest with my customers; they work way too hard for their money for me to haul a bull that is just not going to make it. This is not a cheap game to play with fuel and feed cost; if the bull is not going to work I am going to tell them.”

As for his fame with the bucking dummy job, Cox reminisced, “Dean Wilson and I kind of fell into that because nobody else was stupid enough to do it. Basically, when the futurity deal was all getting started, we would go to Bob Wilfong or Samford Ranch and we got to be the ones who put the most dummies on. Dean and I have done this so long we just know what the other is doing, and we clicked, and did it so fast, getting 30 to 40 bulls bucked each hour.”

433 Tilta Whirl bucks at ABBI classic Oklahoma City, OK. Bulls are hauled by Kent Cox for BA Livestock. Photo by Allen Glanville.

Talking about the future of the ABBI and what lies ahead, Cox expanded, “Hopefully, it’s going to get bigger and better, and with all the new people involved comes the new ideas. They are learning fast and making it all better. Rodeo has always been about keeping everything the same, but just look at the bull team concept, it’s already looking good. I believe a classic bull will win a million dollars in a few years and when it happens, the bucking bull business will be on fire. It takes a special bull just to place anymore. Where it used to be a 22-point bull would win anywhere, today this same bull might not win anything. It takes a solid 23-point.”