Presidential Shenanigans: Theodore Roosevelt's White House Wrestling Match
When Theodore Roosevelt was a child, he suffered from asthma and often experienced sudden nighttime asthma attacks. Asthma hampered his breathing. Sometimes attacks would suddenly rouse him from sleep, leaving him to feel as if he was being smothered. His father would carry him close to his chest at night to try to soothe his sick child. Other times, more drastic measures were needed. His parents would bundle him up, take him for a ride in their carriage and race the horses through the streets of New York in an attempt to force air into the child's lungs.
To address his health problems, he turned to physical exercise to strengthen his body. Theodore Sr. built his son a gym in which the young TR grew from a thin and sickly child into an athlete. He developed his chest and arms by lifting dumbbells, by using the horizontal bars, and by hitting a punching bag. He also took up hiking and found that physical exertion helped to minimize his asthma. With encouragement from his father, Roosevelt began a heavy regime of exercise. After being bullied by two older boys on a camping trip, he found a boxing coach to teach him how to fight. Roosevelt began to take boxing lessons from John Long, an ex-prize fighter. Commenting later about those lessons, Roosevelt recalled, "I was a painfully slow and awkward pupil."With improved health came increased confidence. When he entered Harvard College on September 27, 1876, his father told him "Take care of your morals first, your health next, and finally your studies".
While at Harvard, Roosevelt participated in rowing, wrestling and boxing. He was once runner-up in a Harvard boxing tournament, and in his autobiography he recalled making it to either the finals or the semifinals of a tournament. Roosevelt continued his interest in boxing and wrestling, even after he embarked on his political career. In 1899, when he was Governor of New York, the middleweight wrestling champion Mike J. Dwyer traveled to Albany for regular matches with Roosevelt. Roosevelt invited Dwyer to the office and he would grapple with the champ three or four times a week. He set up a wrestling mat set up in the billiard room of the Executive Mansion. Roosevelt took on Dwyer in wrestler's attire: regulation wrestling tights and trunks. According to contemporary news accounts. Dwyer reportedly didn't hold back with Roosevelt. An article from the Morning Oregonian in 1908 recalled that the champ "promptly pinned Mr. Roosevelt's shoulders to the mat" before throwing him a total of three times in 20 minutes. Losing these sparring sessions didn't seem to upset Roosevelt. He noted in his autobiography that Dwyer was more skilled than him and he bore no resentment about this. As far as he was concerned, this was great exercise as well as a nice diversion from his political problems. An oarsman eventually took Dwyer's place, but he was wasn't as much of a challenge to Roosevelt as Dwyer had been.
The wrestling matches were quite intense according to reports. Roosevelt wrote: "By the end of our second afternoon one of his long ribs had been caved in and two of my short ribs badly damaged, and my left shoulder-blade so nearly shoved out of place that it creaked."
The New York state comptroller viewed Roosevelt's wrestling activity as unseemly. He refused to audit a bill for a wrestling mat which the governor requested. The comptroller explained that he considered billiards to be a suitable activity for the state house, but that "a wrestling-mat symbolized something unusual and unheard of and could not be permitted."
Roosevelt wanted to expand his wrestling knowledge and wanted to learn new techniques and holds. He looked to the Far East to expand his knowledge of the sport. At the start of the 20th century, judo and jiu-jitsu were not well-known in the United States, but Roosevelt had heard of them, and was intrigued. He wanted to study under Yoshiaki Yamashita, from Kanazawa, Ishikawa, Japan. Yamashita was considered to be, according to one contemporary wrestling magazine, "The Toughest Man in Professional Wrestling". He wrestled in the US and taught at the United States Naval Academy. In 1904, after Roosevelt became President following the assassination of William McKinley, he decided to invite Yamashita to the Oval Office.
Roosevelt wrestled with Yamashita and his partner three times a week. He learned judo moves. Yamashita described his pupil as "very heavy and very impetuous," according to an article in the Journal of Combative Sports written by Joseph R. Svinth. Roosevelt had grown to well over 200 pounds at this point, and he tried to use combat sports as a means of losing weight. Although he wasn't especially proficient in judo or jiu-jitsu, Roosevelt very much enjoyed the education that Yamashita was giving him. In Theodore Roosevelt's Letters to his Children, he wrote that finished the sessions "mottled with bruises" but as he wrote to his son Ted, "I have made good progress, and since you left they have taught me new throws that are perfect corkers." Roosevelt also told his son Kermit of a moment in a match where he thought victory was his. He wrote, "I also got hold of his windpipe and thought I could choke him off before he could choke me. However, he got ahead." Roosevelt practiced the newly learned art with just about anyone who was willing. His sparring partners included his Secretary of War, William Howard Taft (a former college wrestler). Roosevelt later wrote to Ted of his sessions with the Japanese master, "I find the wrestling a trifle too vehement for mere rest. My right ankle and left wrist and one thumb and both great toes are swollen sufficiently to more or less impair their usefulness."
Eventually, Roosevelt would have to stop jiu-jitsu, wrestling and boxing because of an injury. During a boxing sparring session, an artillery captain socked him in the eye, and the blow damaged the blood vessels. Mike Conklin wrote for the Chicago Tribune that the punch caused "severe hemorrhaging" and "eventually a detached retina." By 1908, it robbed Roosevelt of vision in the eye. Roosevelt tried to put a positive spin on things, however. He wrote: "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."
Roosevelt was a man who loved to push himself and test his physical limits. His toughness was showcased years later, when he ran as a third-party candidate for the Bull-Moose Party in the 1912 election. Prior to giving a speech in Milwaukee, Roosevelt was shot by saloonkeeper John Flammang Schrank. The bullet lodged in his chest after penetrating his steel eyeglass case and passing through a thick (50 pages) single-folded copy of the speech he was carrying in his jacket. Roosevelt, as an experienced hunter and anatomist, concluded that since he was not coughing blood, the bullet had not reached his lung. He refused to go to the hospital immediately and instead delivered his scheduled speech with blood seeping into his shirt. He spoke for 90 minutes. His opening comments to the gathered crowd were, "Ladies and gentlemen, I don't know whether you fully understand that I have just been shot, but it takes more than that to kill a Bull Moose."
On January 5, 1919, when Roosevelt died in his sleep after a blood clot detached from a vein and travelled to his lung, Vice-President Thomas R. Marshall remarked, "Death had to take Roosevelt sleeping, for if he had been awake, there would have been a fight."
To address his health problems, he turned to physical exercise to strengthen his body. Theodore Sr. built his son a gym in which the young TR grew from a thin and sickly child into an athlete. He developed his chest and arms by lifting dumbbells, by using the horizontal bars, and by hitting a punching bag. He also took up hiking and found that physical exertion helped to minimize his asthma. With encouragement from his father, Roosevelt began a heavy regime of exercise. After being bullied by two older boys on a camping trip, he found a boxing coach to teach him how to fight. Roosevelt began to take boxing lessons from John Long, an ex-prize fighter. Commenting later about those lessons, Roosevelt recalled, "I was a painfully slow and awkward pupil."With improved health came increased confidence. When he entered Harvard College on September 27, 1876, his father told him "Take care of your morals first, your health next, and finally your studies".
While at Harvard, Roosevelt participated in rowing, wrestling and boxing. He was once runner-up in a Harvard boxing tournament, and in his autobiography he recalled making it to either the finals or the semifinals of a tournament. Roosevelt continued his interest in boxing and wrestling, even after he embarked on his political career. In 1899, when he was Governor of New York, the middleweight wrestling champion Mike J. Dwyer traveled to Albany for regular matches with Roosevelt. Roosevelt invited Dwyer to the office and he would grapple with the champ three or four times a week. He set up a wrestling mat set up in the billiard room of the Executive Mansion. Roosevelt took on Dwyer in wrestler's attire: regulation wrestling tights and trunks. According to contemporary news accounts. Dwyer reportedly didn't hold back with Roosevelt. An article from the Morning Oregonian in 1908 recalled that the champ "promptly pinned Mr. Roosevelt's shoulders to the mat" before throwing him a total of three times in 20 minutes. Losing these sparring sessions didn't seem to upset Roosevelt. He noted in his autobiography that Dwyer was more skilled than him and he bore no resentment about this. As far as he was concerned, this was great exercise as well as a nice diversion from his political problems. An oarsman eventually took Dwyer's place, but he was wasn't as much of a challenge to Roosevelt as Dwyer had been.
The wrestling matches were quite intense according to reports. Roosevelt wrote: "By the end of our second afternoon one of his long ribs had been caved in and two of my short ribs badly damaged, and my left shoulder-blade so nearly shoved out of place that it creaked."
The New York state comptroller viewed Roosevelt's wrestling activity as unseemly. He refused to audit a bill for a wrestling mat which the governor requested. The comptroller explained that he considered billiards to be a suitable activity for the state house, but that "a wrestling-mat symbolized something unusual and unheard of and could not be permitted."
Roosevelt wanted to expand his wrestling knowledge and wanted to learn new techniques and holds. He looked to the Far East to expand his knowledge of the sport. At the start of the 20th century, judo and jiu-jitsu were not well-known in the United States, but Roosevelt had heard of them, and was intrigued. He wanted to study under Yoshiaki Yamashita, from Kanazawa, Ishikawa, Japan. Yamashita was considered to be, according to one contemporary wrestling magazine, "The Toughest Man in Professional Wrestling". He wrestled in the US and taught at the United States Naval Academy. In 1904, after Roosevelt became President following the assassination of William McKinley, he decided to invite Yamashita to the Oval Office.
Roosevelt wrestled with Yamashita and his partner three times a week. He learned judo moves. Yamashita described his pupil as "very heavy and very impetuous," according to an article in the Journal of Combative Sports written by Joseph R. Svinth. Roosevelt had grown to well over 200 pounds at this point, and he tried to use combat sports as a means of losing weight. Although he wasn't especially proficient in judo or jiu-jitsu, Roosevelt very much enjoyed the education that Yamashita was giving him. In Theodore Roosevelt's Letters to his Children, he wrote that finished the sessions "mottled with bruises" but as he wrote to his son Ted, "I have made good progress, and since you left they have taught me new throws that are perfect corkers." Roosevelt also told his son Kermit of a moment in a match where he thought victory was his. He wrote, "I also got hold of his windpipe and thought I could choke him off before he could choke me. However, he got ahead." Roosevelt practiced the newly learned art with just about anyone who was willing. His sparring partners included his Secretary of War, William Howard Taft (a former college wrestler). Roosevelt later wrote to Ted of his sessions with the Japanese master, "I find the wrestling a trifle too vehement for mere rest. My right ankle and left wrist and one thumb and both great toes are swollen sufficiently to more or less impair their usefulness."
Eventually, Roosevelt would have to stop jiu-jitsu, wrestling and boxing because of an injury. During a boxing sparring session, an artillery captain socked him in the eye, and the blow damaged the blood vessels. Mike Conklin wrote for the Chicago Tribune that the punch caused "severe hemorrhaging" and "eventually a detached retina." By 1908, it robbed Roosevelt of vision in the eye. Roosevelt tried to put a positive spin on things, however. He wrote: "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."
Roosevelt was a man who loved to push himself and test his physical limits. His toughness was showcased years later, when he ran as a third-party candidate for the Bull-Moose Party in the 1912 election. Prior to giving a speech in Milwaukee, Roosevelt was shot by saloonkeeper John Flammang Schrank. The bullet lodged in his chest after penetrating his steel eyeglass case and passing through a thick (50 pages) single-folded copy of the speech he was carrying in his jacket. Roosevelt, as an experienced hunter and anatomist, concluded that since he was not coughing blood, the bullet had not reached his lung. He refused to go to the hospital immediately and instead delivered his scheduled speech with blood seeping into his shirt. He spoke for 90 minutes. His opening comments to the gathered crowd were, "Ladies and gentlemen, I don't know whether you fully understand that I have just been shot, but it takes more than that to kill a Bull Moose."
On January 5, 1919, when Roosevelt died in his sleep after a blood clot detached from a vein and travelled to his lung, Vice-President Thomas R. Marshall remarked, "Death had to take Roosevelt sleeping, for if he had been awake, there would have been a fight."