Big Black, a Money Bull who Acted like a Big Pet, Retires
If Chase Outlaw wants a new tattoo, may we suggest a giant rendering of Big Black?
Six times Outlaw mounted the powerful bull who acted like a puppy dog outside the arena. And six times the pair hit it out of the park for rides of 90-points or more.
Big Black, who will retire at the PBR Teams Championship this weekend in Las Vegas, was as popular with riders as cold beer and sticky rosin. In 63 elite level outs, he yielded 27 rides for an average score of 89.86.
Two-time PBR World Champion J.B. Mauney picked Big Black in a short round in Springfield and was thrown off for a 46-point bull score. Mauney picked him again in Little Rock in 2019. This time, he hung on with reckless joy as if the bull were Stanley Kubrick’s atomic missile dropping toward earth. Mauney’s 90.75-points won the event.
The highest-scored ride on the bull often simply known as “Black” was Daylon Swearingen for 93 points in the 2022 World Finals on the way to his world championship.
Some bulls divide fans into “love ‘em or hate ‘em” camps. Not Black. Anyone with a bad thing to say about a superstar athlete who was like a loveable pet when not competing is undoubtedly at odds with the universe when opening their eyes in the morning.
“Black has a personality like a little kid – he’s playful and he pouts. He’s just always doing things that make you smile,” said the bull’s owner, Kenny McElroy of K-C Bucking Bulls. “When you let him out, he’ll dig the mound, start throwing the dirt around, and will walk away looking like he’s been in the desert for a month. That bull, I’d still let him walk around the house.”
J.B. Mauney Riding Big Black
Bull Stock Media
Riders loved getting on Black (heck, they won $223,260 in round money on him), and he loved competing.
McElroy saw that when resting Black for a weekend as he loaded the trailer with other bulls to head for the arena.
“He’d be standing with his nose by the gate latch to try to get out and on the bus,” McElroy said. “Then he gets mad when the last bull goes out, tail in the corner, head down, he’s just there pouting, tryin’ to get me to feel sorry for him.”
That’s the personality that won the hearts of Kenny and his wife and stock contractor partner Cristy when meeting Big Black when he was three. When Mickey Robison and Steve Haworth put the 3-year-old bull into an elite sale in late 2017, the McElroys partnered with Joe and Nina Webb to buy him. The next year he made a run for Bull of the Year.
Last winter in his fifth year of elite PBR competition, Big Black suffered a minor injury and has now healed fully. Kenny discussed the situation with Cristy and the Webbs, and decided to retire him.
“It’s just not worth injuring Black by bucking him,” he said of the nine-year-old bull.
Not many bulls get retirement ceremonies. Black will be honored on Friday night at the PBR Camping World Team Series Championship, leaving the gate riderless for a ceremonial lap inside T-Mobile Arena.
The McElroys met through the rodeo. Kenny’s mom and dad had a rodeo company and Cristy was the secretary who also ran barrels. Kenny roped, bulldogged, and rode broncs. They got married and bought what was a soybean field to build the ranch of their dreams in Mt. Orab, about 50 miles east of Cincinnati, now home to more than 200 bulls.
If true love has no bounds, that’s demonstrated in the McElroys’ devotion to each of their animals. Case in point is the biggest one of them all, the late great Mississippi Hippy, who once weighed in at an astounding 2,460 pounds.
The McElroys would go to significant lengths to care for the once-ornery giant bovine who met a delightful little girl and was by all accounts born again.
“Mississippi Hippy was a lot like Black in being very personable. But when he was 3, he might have been the meanest bull I had on this place,” McElroy said. “One day, he and my daughter Josie had a big bond. He just started loving on Josie and became like a big dog. After that, you could walk in there and pet on him. It seemed like he got ranker in competition when he got friendly in the pen.”
When Mississippi Hippy hurt a hip muscle at an Iron Cowboy, Kenny brought the giant brown and white bull to Texas A&M for evaluation. The prognosis was not good. Surgery wasn’t an option.
McElroy invested a combined $50,000 in Magna Wave machine and one for laser therapy. Following successful electro-pulse therapy, Hippy’s stressed muscle was healed, and he lived out a peaceful life spending many days under one particular oak tree on the ranch in southwest Ohio. He died at 13 and is buried on the ranch.
McElroy would use the laser therapy machine to fix a slipped disk in Big Black’s back.
Bull Stock Media
A herd of bulls retired from the PBR roam two pasture fields on the McElroys’ 114-acre ranch. There’s Bad Touch, who was unridden in 36 outs. There’s Damn Right and Rock Star, Shoot Out the Lights and Call to Law, who Kenny says probably won $80,000 in his career.
“Yeah, they’re old, but they gave it their all, and they don’t deserve anything but to live out their life here,” McElroy said.
The McElroys recently lost Upper Cut at 19. The bull who started their breeding program is mounted over their fireplace.
As for Big Black, who looks as fit as ever even in getting his AARP card, horns white as a toothpaste ad, he’ll be on the McElroys ranch, helping beget the next generation of bucking bulls.
“He’s already got a four-year-old son, a big dude, a real stud we’ll buck in the Classic,” Kenny said. “We haven’t named him yet. We’ll put it out in the public. Maybe someone reading about him will have a good idea on what we name him.”
BIG BLACK BY THE NUMBERS
- 63 outs
- 36 Buck offs
- 27 Qualified Rides
- 89.86 Average ride sore: 89.86 Pts.
- 18 90-point rides
- 44.01 average bull score
