The Oklahoma senator who challenged Teamsters’ boss to a fight is defending his actions during a Senate hearing, saying “maybe we should bring” back canings to Congress to “keep people from thinking they’re so tough.”

Republican U.S. Sen. Markwayne Mullin, a former MMA fighter, confronted Teamsters President Sean O’Brien during a Senate committee hearing on Tuesday. Mullin challenged Charlestown’s O’Brien to a physical fight after O’Brien had ripped the senator on social media.

Mullin doubled down on his antics after the chaos in front of the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions.

“This isn’t anything new,” the senator said on Fox Business. “Andrew Jackson challenged nine people to a duel when he was president, and he also knocked one guy out at a White House dinner. There’s been canings before in the Senate, too.

“Maybe we should bring some of that back,” Mullin added. “Keep people from thinking they’re so tough, and make us sit at a table and we can actually work out our differences without poking at each other and want to run to cameras and call people names.”

In the 1850s before the Civil War, Massachusetts U.S. Sen. Charles Sumner — who was anti-slavery — was savagely attacked by a House member. U.S. Rep. Preston Brooks repeatedly struck Sumner with a metal-topped cane in the Senate Chamber.

“Maybe if we have some type of respect because we know there’s going to be consequences for your actions, then maybe we can move on with all this, I don’t know, jargon that happens around this place,” Mullin said on Fox Business.

The shouting match between Mullin and O’Brien never turned physical on Tuesday, but it led to Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders getting in the middle of the battle as he started yelling and banging his gavel.

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The beef between Mullin and O’Brien has been building for months.

“What went through my mind was, ‘You’re one of 100 of the most powerful people in the country, and you’re acting like a 12-year-old in a schoolyard because you didn’t get your way,’ ” O’Brien said about Mullin on CNN.

“Look, he actually has the ability, he’s one of 100 of the elite to actually effectuate change in this country, and he’s focused on being a bully,” O’Brien added. “We’re not going to stand for it, and we definitely were brought up differently.”

The battle between Mullin and O’Brien wasn’t the only fracas in Congress on Tuesday. Former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy was accused of elbowing Republican Congressman Tim Burchett — who had voted to remove McCarthy as speaker — in a Capitol hallway.

McCarthy said he didn’t elbow Burchett, telling reporters, “I guess our shoulders hit… I did not run and hit the guy. I did not kidney punch him.”

Republican Congressman Matt Gaetz filed an ethics complaint against McCarthy following the alleged elbow.