Tough Guys in the White House – A Boxing Story…

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By Brian “The Beret” Young

Hello again boxing fans, as many of my readers know I am a self-proclaimed history nerd. So today, I thought I would combine my love of boxing and history and have a little fun. I hope you enjoy.

Over the last few years our political landscape in America has been nasty. The days of working together seem to be a thing of the past and there is a non-stop verbal assault across the aisle. More than a few times this nastiness has actually come with “hard talk” by folks. Joe Biden famously said of Donald Trump “If I were in high school, I’d take him behind the gym and beat the hell out of him” to which Trump replied “He doesn’t know me, but he would go down fast and hard, crying all the way”.

Hard talk for sure, but it’s all just talk. Yet it wasn’t always that way. In the history of the United States we have had some serious fighters who worked in the oval office and today we will take a look at the top three. Before we begin, some honorable mentions to presidents who were also tough guys, but without gloves. George Washington, Abe Lincoln and William Howard Taft were all accomplished wrestlers, Taft even being Yale Champion! However, we are here to talk boxing so let’s begin.

IN THIS CORNER THE 34th PRESIDENT DWIGHT DAVID EISENHOWER… Yes, Eisenhower was not only a Five Star General, but he was also a gifted athlete. While at West Point, a young Dwight D. was starting running back and linebacker in 1912 (even managing to tackle a guy playing for the Carlisle Indians named Jim Thorpe!) but he suffered a knee injury that took him off the gridiron. But he wasn’t done with athletics. He continued to box and was known to be quite good, but sadly suffered a second knee injury that made him hang up his gloves. Being determined to still “fight” he then took up fencing and then, oh yeah fought in TWO WORLD WARS!! President Eisenhower was a boxer, and a war hero. A real tough guy. Maybe that’s why he always has that smirk on his face in every picture you see of him, he knew that he probably actually could kick ass, not just brag about it.

AND NOW ENTERING THE RING, THE 38th PRESIDENT GERALD RUDOLPH FORD… Most people know that Gerald Ford was a great athlete. He went to Michigan on a football scholarship where he played on two Wolverines National Championship teams (1932 and 1933) as a center, linebacker and long snapper. In his senior year of 1934 he was named team MVP. After graduation he was offered not one but two NFL contracts, with the Detroit Lions and the Green Bay Packers. Yet Ford had other plans, he wanted to be a lawyer and tried to get into Yale Law School by becoming their assistant varsity football coach and also the Yale Boxing coach. Yep, Gerald Ford was to become the coach of one of the best collegiate boxing teams in the country at that time, even though he was never a trained boxer himself. Ford was such a natural athlete and all around tough guy that he did adapt quickly and did become a decent fighter and instructor. So much so that when he enlisted in the Navy after Japan bombed Pearl Harbor he became the navel fitness instructor. Ford is a President who more than likely could actually take someone down fast and hard, crying all the way. But Ford and Eisenhower wouldn’t even dare lace up the gloves against the “baddest” President in U.S History….

LADIES AND GENTLEMEN, PUT YOUR HANDS TOGETHER FOR THE REIGNING AND DEFENDING CHAMPION OF PRESIDENTIAL HISTORY…. THE 26th PRESIDENT THEODORE “TEDDY” ROOSEVELT… Yes, fight fans, if ever there was a true bad ass in the white house it was Teddy. Roosevelt was born a sickly kid, suffered from asthma and was always small for his age. When he was 14, he asked his father to take boxing lessons and a lifelong love affair was born.

Teddy loved fighting both in and out of the ring. There are countless anecdotes of fights he would get in over just about anything (including once a tennis match he was playing). He went to Harvard where he boxed and wrestled but that doesn’t even scratch the surface of how hard he was. His mother and Wife died the same day, in the same house, and to deal with that loss Roosevelt moved out west to become a self-taught cowboy.

One night he went into a saloon, a drunk started mocking him for wearing glasses and even took out his gun and fired a few shots. The man then made his big mistake, he approached Teddy and put the gun to Roosevelt’s face and made fun of him again. Wrong move, Roosevelt proceeded to beat the shit out of the guy and then locked him up in a shed. And, oh, there was so much more. He formed the Rough Riders and fought in the Spanish American war, and even led the famous battle of San Juan Hill.

Once he became Governor of New York, he hired a champion middleweight wrestler to “train” him three to four days a week. By training I mean just be there to fight him. At this time, in his 40’s, he also took up Judo. Once he was President, he set up the White House basement as his own training room where he would box, wrestle or spar with anyone who was willing to fight him. While serving, he was boxing a young Army Captain who landed a perfect counter right to the Presidents eye, breaking the blood vessels and blinding Teddy in that eye for the rest of his life. If all this doesn’t prove Roosevelt was the baddest of bad asses, then let me finish up with one final story.

In 1912, Roosevelt was running for President for the Progressive party. While on his way to deliver a speech in Milwaukee he was greeting supporters on his way to the platform when a man named John Schrank got in front of him, pulled out a pistol and shot Teddy in the chest. The rolled up speech and his glasses case helped deflect the bullet but he was shot. Instead of going to the hospital he gave his speech, an hour long speech!!! When he took the speech out of his pocket it was bloodstained and he told the crowd, “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”. Only after the speech did he go to the hospital where they found the bullet lodged between his ribs, where it would stay the rest of his life.

So next time you read a tweet from a President or any politician talking tough, or see a person with political power to bully, just remember, at one time there were real tough guys in the job. And they wouldn’t have needed to talk the talk because Eisenhower, Ford and especially Teddy Roosevelt all truly walked the walk.

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