Dana White’s bucking bull is a lot like him – not the biggest, but compact, fiery and lots of heart. 

F Bomb, named after the UFC boss’s favorite go-to word, is an up-and-coming 4-year old bull managed and trained by Dennis Davis, a former bull rider with a proven knack for recognizing potential in the animal athletes he used to mount.

“There’s no quit in that bull,” Davis said. “It’s a matter of time, having F Bomb compete and see where he goes.  That’s not just this bull, that’s any young bull. He’s not quite mean, he doesn’t have the size, but like Dana says, he has the heart.”

As professional bull riding grows, experts with a niche specialization have come to the forefront, developing successful businesses that help the sport improve. Davis, 52, has become one of the industry’s premier bucking bull trainers.

Call him a bull whisperer. But Davis rejects any talk of fuzzy spiritual mysticism to explain identifying future greatness in an animal athlete then training him to deliver the goods.

“To get the maximum performance out of a bull, you need to know the bull,” he says. “It’s like a relationship with an employee – you need to know them and be around them to get the best performance out of any person.”

Davis’ program democratizes the bull side of the sport.  Anyone with a healthy checkbook can become the owner of a bull that competes in PBR.

The rest is then up to Davis, who made his bones with the “Jaynes Gang” which created the pioneering futurity blueprint programs under the company Billy Jaynes of Exclusive Genetics/ Bucking Bull Games.

Davis with PBR co-founder Jerome Robinson

His current role is akin to training racehorses. As one of the sport’s premier trainers, Davis is essentially compensated for housing, feeding and caring for the bulls. He hauls them to events, too, and gets into the chute to prepare the bull for each out.  

Davis is entrusted with every important element of care for the animal, who, hopefully, will begin generating winnings. Each bull owner pays Davis a monthly fee and collects 80 percent of the bull’s earned prize money.

Dennis Davis Bucking Bulls has about 35 bulls, owned by regular Joes and guys named Dana alike.

He manages the bulls and the owners. White, for instance, once dialed up Davis to ask about how his bull was doing...immediately before addressing millions of Americans at the 2020 Republican National Convention.

Davis also personally owns five bulls.

He comes from a rodeo background in South Texas. His father was an all-around cowboy who bucked horses competitively at backyard rodeos in the 1960s and 1970s near their home in Eagle Lake.

Davis’ parents separated when he was 3.  He’d see his dad from time to time, and his family on both sides rodeoed. 

Every day before school, Davis, up before dawn, would go to his grandfather’s ranch, checking on the cows and often getting on the calves. 

“He’d hold one down and let me get on one,” he said of his Grandpa Tucker, the man he credits with teaching him the value of hard work, discipline and responsibility. 

Davis would work his way up to bull riding as a freshman in high school in Halletsville, Texas outside of Houston.

“It was scary at first, and I have to say I was a little bit scared on almost every one after that,” he said. “It was like being on the back of a car holding on. Bulls showed you a whole different power.”

In addition to becoming a top rodeo athlete in high school, Davis was playing basketball and football, and he became a standout in track as one of the top long jumpers in Texas. He took a break from bull riding and attended Texas Southern University in Houston on a track scholarship.

After graduation, Davis went to a practice bull riding. Beers were passed around and jokes exchanged.

“There was one bull nobody wanted to get on,” he remembered. “It wasn’t like a big time bounty bull, but he was said to be mean.  I rode him; turned out to be a flat spinner, nothing special. But I’d forgotten the feeling of how amazing this felt. It lit a fire, and I went full time.”

Davis entered PRCA events, and as he was finishing up his career, the PBR was founded, and he competed at PBR Touring Pro events.

There were several Black cowboys touring at the time, and Davis traveled with Ervin Williams of Tulsa, an accomplished NFR cowboy who took Davis under his wing.  Donald Goodman, who despite once breaking his neck won several Bill Pickett Invitational Rodeo championships and excelled in bareback events, was his roommate at one time.

“I could hold my own and hung with those guys,” Davis says.

He was still competing on weekends into his mid-30s. During the week, he worked at Igloo products. On weekends, a son and daughter now often joined his wife on the road.

At a Thanksgiving bull riding – the John Nash Bull Bash – Davis was turned upside down by a wild jump kicker. The bull stepped on his back and broke his scapula. 

“The doctor said, ‘You have two children now and want to think about what you’re doing’,” Davis recalled. “’Break it again, and you can lose the mobility of your right arm’.”

Right there, he decided to retire from bull riding.

Still, after healing, he competed in calf roping at jackpots around the south.

Davis had known Billy Jaynes, the PRCA stock contractor, and in fact had passed his ranch – the Jaynes Gang Place – every morning going to work at Igloo. 

He had heard Jaynes was involved with ABBI (American Bucking Bull, Inc.) futurities, which begin with 2-year old bulls bucking dummies, and knew he would be hauling bulls to Las Vegas.

“I had always wanted to go and be in that atmosphere, so I stopped by to see if he needed a hand and had an opening,” Davis said.

It turns out Jaynes was doing a fair amount of embryo and artificial insemination of cows, and he needed a database built to house and manage his genetics information.

Davis was hired to build the system, and as the project was being completed in 2012, the Jaynes Gang’s trainer quit.

“Billy asked me if I had ever thought about training bulls. I said, ‘Heck yeah, that’s what I’m here for!  I’m not here to mess with computers.” 

Davis was now head of the Jaynes Gang’s training program and could focus on bulls every day.

When Exclusive Genetics/ Bucking Bull Games shut its doors in 2018, the torch was passed, and Dennis Davis Bucking Bulls was formed.

“I still wanted to play the game, and by that time I felt I had a knack for the bulls,” Davis said. “I’m figuring them out, they’re just like people. I knew I could do this on my own. 

Davis had already “flipped the switch” on a bull for $500,000 – meaning he raised someone’s bull who at the end of the futurity won the jackpot.

The success of that bull, Miss Kitty’s Peace Maker, who went on to buck in the PBR Pendleton Whisky Velocity tour, boosted his confidence. 

“I got it right.  What happened was what I thought would happen. So I started Dennis Davis Bucking Bulls.”

In announcing the news of his retirement, Billy Jaynes said, “I encourage all my customers to leave their bulls in the capable hands of Dennis Davis. I am so sure of the future success of Dennis, that I am offering my training facilities for him to work his magic.”

Davis, who is a member of ABBI, is courting his own customers now, including UFC boss White.

The two met a few years ago when White was traveling the country to discover new MMA fighters as part of his reality show, Dana White: Lookin’ for a Fight.

Wherever the show set up to recruit fighters, it followed a prevailing local theme. In Houston, it was rodeo and bull riding.  

White knows Show Biz. How could he not show someone from his crew getting on a bucking bull?

“I always thought bull riding was absolutely insane,” White said. “And it’s literally the most dangerous sport in the world.”

White himself would wind up attempting a bull for the cameras.

“I’m not really afraid of anything, including death,” he said. “That was the first time I felt legit fear. I was scared.”

UFC’s badass boss hung on for 3.07 seconds. He skidded across the dirt and the bull came within inches of stomping him.

“That was the fastest, scariest, craziest three seconds you will ever have in your life,” White said.

In learning about the bucking bull business during the filming (the YouTube video of the episode has 1.9 million views), White decided to purchase a bull.  And then he would buy another.  And another.

F Bomb is his favorite.

White is known to proudly post F Bomb bucking videos on social media, reaching millions of new potential PBR fans. 

He’s always interested in how F Bomb is doing and will reach out to Davis to ask about him, even when half a world away at Fight Island off the coast of Abu Dhabi.

“F Bomb slams guys, and if you ride him you get good points,” Davis explains.

Davis monitors all his bulls very closely. For White’s bovine pride and joy, he has his eye on future Velocity Tour events, where Davis’ bull team competes.

At the 2021 Collision at the Coliseum this weekend in Charleston, SC, which is also a stop on the Million Dollar Bull Team Challenge, Circle C Ranch/Dennis Davis Bucking Bulls finished second with 275.43 points.

The business’ motto of Dennis Davis Bucking Bulls is “You can own a bucking bull.”

There’s no truck, trailer or ranch needed. Davis takes care of all that for yearling (one-year-old), futurity (two year-old), derby (three year-old), and classic (four year-old). He’ll hook potential owners into breeders or buy the bull himself.

He’s generally on the road 48 weekends a year, doing what he loves, for customers who can share in the thrill of a sport that’s always been in his blood.

Unlike Dana White, nobody has to test drive a bull.  Fans who are interested in bull ownership can find Davis on social media.