at the Harvard lightweight tournament, after the bell rang and Roosevelt’s opponent Hanks caught him in the nose anyway, the crowd went absolutely apeshit. Roosevelt threw up his arm to quiet them, said Hanks just hadn’t heard the bell, and shook his hand.
Roosevelt was such a brawler that when Hanks asked if they should stop, he shook his head “like a terrier,” bared his teeth, and started swinging again.
"I regard boxing, whether professional or amateur, as a first-class sport, and I do not regard it as brutalizing. . . . Powerful, vigorous men of strong animal development must have some way in which their animal spirits can find vent." —Teddy Roosevelt