We occasionally see fighting in parliaments, specially in Ukraine, Taiwan, India,etc. However, was there a case in history of leaders of two different countries fighting each other? For example at a UN meeting or something.
Leaders of countries say bad stuff about each other all the time, so there’s got to be at least one such case.
I’m sure it must have happened back when heads of state led armies and fought with them, but I don’t know of any specific examples there. I don’t think there are any examples in modern times in developed countries, but I did find a challenge to a fist fight from a head of state to a presidential candidate:
Kennedy and Khrushchev threatened each other with nuclear missiles. From what I’ve heard it got pretty intense.
The Kitchen Debate is the closest I can come up with but it was not a physical fight
I dunno, but I’d pay for the PPV of Obama vs. Putin. Barack’s younger, bigger, taller and has the reach, but you know Putin had to have learned some sneaky stuff in the KGB.
Henry VIII of England and Francis I of France wrestled each other at the Field of the Cloth of Gold, ostensibly for sport, although Henry probably took it quite seriously.
There are several times when rival claimants to leadership of the same country have killed each other—though usually not directly. Roman emperor Maximian was forced to commit suicide by Constantine, whom he had tried to usurp from retirement. Constantine also had rival emperor Licinius I executed. King Edward V of England was delegitimized and probably killed on the orders of King Richard III. Oliver Cromwell is legally considered the regicide of Charles I, though he didn’t deliver the fatal blow. If you believe that Lady Jane Grey was the legitimate queen of England, then she was killed on the orders of, or at least with the consent of, Mary I. There are many further cases.
Cases where a head of state personally assaulted or killed another head of state are undoubtedly rare. I know that King Kenneth II of Scotland is said to have killed rival claimant King Amlaíb in 971, though sources are vague as to whether the killing was carried out personally. You might want to check the individual articles in Wikipedia’s category for Monarchs killed in action—possibly some of the kings listed there were killed in battle by other kings.
And judo. Don’t forget the judo.
Obama, to my knowledge, has no martial arts training whatsoever.
I have a vague memory about one head of state chasing another around a table at treaty negotiations, trying to get a signature. Can’t remember for sure who they were, although I think one of them was Hitler.
Last spring, President Duterte of the Philippines challenged Donald Trump to a fight. To bad they didn’t do it. They could have made a lot of money on Pay Per View for that…
It would have been funny as hell if Angela Merkel had turned around an slapped George W. Bush.
I doubt if anybody would ever want to mix it up with Vladimir Putin.
We may see it if Trump is elected and grabs her crotch at a summit.
Theoderic the Great, king of the Ostrogoths, personally killed Odoacer, king of Italy, at a reconciliation party(!) back in 493.
That is not how one reconciles. SOMEbody didn’t get the memo.
Duterte and Putin and Trump should have a cage match, in a shark cage, with a shark.
So you are saying that Angela Merkel and Theresa May are NOT going to mud wrestle to settle the terms of the Brexit?
Well, this is a head of state and a head of government, and it isn’t exactly a fight, but it may be of interest: LBJ manhandled Canadian Prime Minister Lester B. Pearson during a meeting in 1965.
Hitler was pretty abusive and threatening to Austrian chancellor Kurt Schuschnigg at their meeting in February 1938. I don’t think any physical violence was used but I seem to remember Schushnigg needed a sedative, can’t find confirmation of that on wiki or Joachim Fest’s biography of Hitler.
Of course for American Congress there was the 1856 caning of Senator Charles Sumner by Congressman Preston Brooks after a particularly vicious anti slavery speech by Sumner (who was not the most pleasant person in the world). Brooks broke his cane in thrashing Sumner, which were treated as holy relics in the South. Sumner suffered severe physical and mental injuries.