Roy Cooper helped Joe Beaver get his start in professional rodeo by inviting him to a match roping and later encouraging him to really go for it in 1985. That same year, Beaver won the Gold Buckle and Rookie of the Year, snapping Cooper’s streak of five consecutive PRCA Tie-Down Roping World Championships.
The first of Beaver’s generation-spanning rivalries was on.
“If you made a mistake he made you pay for it,” Beaver said of Cooper. “So I had to learn when I was competing against him, don’t make mistakes.”
“What made him so great was three things, number one he’d give the money for the good horses or he would tie his up and ride the good one when he was there....Number two, he would spend the money to run the extra calf, if it cost $2,000 on a jet or $200 for a commercial that might not be there, he was going to make it. And the last thing of it is, he had all of the confidence that he was gonna beat you.”
It was not just Cooper who challenged Beaver. The next two cowboys coming up were Cody Ohl and Fred Whitfield, two men equally as talented and confident as the Super Looper.
“When you have a career like Joe’s, you have more rivalries than one. He is one of the few guys who outlived a rivalry,” 26-time World Champion Trevor Brazile said. “Because he was always at the top. There was always a next guy coming.”
After winning Rookie of the Year and making the NFR in 1994, Ohl quickly became known for his competitive fire in the arena and that fire helped him win five PRCA Tie-Down Roping World Championships.
“Cody was that guy that if you thought you were giving 100 percent and you roped with him, you realized he may be giving 120 percent,” Beaver said. “His body is the same way as mine, we tore it up, but he left it out there every time on the field.
Beaver also marveled at Ohl’s showmanship. When the lights were the brightest and the money was the biggest, Cody Ohl seemed to always deliver.
“He was a guy who played to the crowd’s tune,” Beaver said. “When he stepped up, you had to take a backseat.”
Whitfield came up a little before Cody Ohl and made his mark on the professional rodeo world for the first time in 1991 by winning the World Championship. He would go on to win three more World Titles from 1999-2002 and Joe Beaver believes Whitfield was the most complete roper he’d ever seen during his prime.
“He could run the big one and get by him, a big sorry nasty calf,” Beaver said. “Or he could tie the little old rat in 7 flat.....Once he figured what worked for Fred, he didn’t change it and you had to beat that guy day in and day out.”
There was more rival of Beaver’s at the tail end of his career. A cowboy named Trevor Brazile who won his first of 14 All-Around World Championships in 2002.
“I can remember being at the house with him and I was at the end and he wasn’t, and he was wearing me out,” Beaver said. “Rope calves, team rope, tie steers that evening, breakaway steers and then be right back at it the next morning.”