1962 Cutting Futurity top 5: (left to right) Fifth-place finishers Yellow Joe Buck and Shorty Freeman; fourth-place finishers Wolf Whistle and Boley Cotton; third-place finishers Hollywood Bill and Jack Newton; Reserve Champions Peppy San and Matlock Rose; and Champions Money’s Glo and Buster Welch • Photo by Dalco
It was an evening to remember as a small group of cutting horse enthusiasts – 30-75 people – gathered in mid-November 1962 at the Sweetwater Coliseum in Sweetwater, Texas, to watch the finals of the first ever 3-year-old Cutting Futurity.
The list of individuals present read like a Who’s Who of the cutting world. They had showed up to watch 20 finalists compete for an unheard of amount of money back then – $18,364.
Although that first event was not National Cutting Horse Association (NCHA) sanctioned, the NCHA did agree to help by collecting the Futurity entry fees, giving the show credibility and integrity. Forty-nine owners entered their horses in that first Futurity, with 36 of them actually showing in the go-rounds, where approximately $8,000 of the overall purse was paid out. The remainder – $10,438 – was paid out in the finals.
Back then, judging was done horseback, there were no score sheets and scores were announced after each run. Buster Welch showed Money’s Glow (King Glo x Our Money x Red Star Joe), owned by C.E. Boyd III, to a winning finals score of 224, earning $3,131. Matlock Rose and Peppy San (Leo San x Peppy Belle x Pep Up), owned by Howell Quarter Horse Ranch, scored a 221 to become the Futurity Reserve Champions.
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