Theodore Roosevelt the Boxer
Growing up Roosevelt became an avid amateur boxer and while he was best at boxing, he was also a capable amateur wrestler. After his interview with Gifford Pinchot in Albany as governor, TR invited Pinchot to wrestle.
When governor he also got to know John L. Sullivan, the country’s first Heavyweight Champion. TR sparred with Sullivan and began to invite military aides to his office for impromptu boxing matches.
At Harvard on March 22, 1879 the 19 year old Roosevelt competed in the finals of the Harvard Gym Boxing Championships against the light heavyweight Champion Charles Steadman Hanks. (C. S. Hanks). When TR was at Harvard Dr. Dudley Sergeant ran the gym. It was Sergeant who told Roosevelt to live a sedentary life. In TR’s most highly profiled fight he lost in a decision to Hanks, beaten to a pulp.
After the fact controversy began to surround the fight. Rumors persisted Hanks landed an illegal blow. That incident was never reported by the New York Times who covered the fight and there are no witnesses who came forward remembering anything out of the ordinary.
The controversy seems to come from Owen Wister who had a different recollection of his friends performance. “We freshmen on the floor and those girls in the gallery witnessed more than a spirited contest; owing to an innocent mistake of Mr. Hanks, we saw that prophetic flash of the Roosevelt that was to come. Time was called on a round, Roosevelt dropped his guard, and Hanks landed a heavy blow on his nose, which spurted blood. Loud boos and hisses from the gallery and floor were set up, whereat Roosevelt's arm was instantly flung out to command silence, while his alert and slender figure stood quiet. "It's all right," he assured us eagerly, his arm still in the air to hold the silence; then, pointing to the time-keeper, "he didn't hear him," he explained, in the same conversational but arresting tone. With bleeding nose he walked up to Hanks and shook hands with him.”
Wister also claimed Alice, wrapped in fur, was in the gym sitting in the ladies balcony and witnessed the fight. The gym had no balcony.
Another Harvard student who saw the bout remembered seeing it in the same way it was reported in the papers. He wrote, Hanks said, good-naturedly, "Hadn't we better stop?" Theodore shook his head like a terrier, bared his teeth, and began punching again.
The rest of the bout was "distinctly gory." It was plain that the smaller man was outclassed. Hanks had a much longer reach; his eyesight, moreover, was normal, whereas Theodore was obliged to box without spectacles. "It was no fight at all.”
Another student remembered, "You should have seen that little fellow staggering about, banging the air. Hanks couldn't put him out and Roosevelt wouldn't give up. It wasn't a fight, but, oh, he showed himself a fighter!"
In a 1908 TR fought Edith’s first cousin Daniel Tyler Moore who struck Roosevelt hard enough to cause blindness to his left eye. It was a tightly held White House secret and it ended his boxing career.
In writing of the incident TR keeps his opponent’s identity a secret to protect his reputation. He wrote “in one bout a young captain of artillery cross-countered me on the eye and the blow smashed the little blood vessels. Fortunately it was my left eye, but the sight has been dim ever since, and if it had been the right eye I should have been entirely unable to shoot.
Accordingly I thought it better to acknowledge that I had become an elderly man and would have to stop boxing.
Roosevelt, who earned the nickname "The Happy Warrior," self-imposed retirement from combat would be short however, as he would later begin training jiu-jitsu under Japanese legend, Yamashita Yoshiaki.
In 1904, Roosevelt trained in jiu-jitsu three times a week. When Professor Yamashita left he continued his training with his sons, his private secretary, the Japanese naval attaché, Secretary of War William Howard Taft and Secretary of the Interior Gifford Pinchot.
