Talk:List of bare-knuckle lightweight champions

Anachronistic nature of the earlier part of this list

There seems to be quite a significant problem with this list, which is that the origins of the lightweight division (and indeed most weight based divisions) is rather obscure. There is a tendency for some writers (and some Wikipedia contributors) to try to take the modern day boxing world, with multiple weight categories, and superimpose it onto historical periods when no weight based categories existed.

For example, the first 5 names on the list (Caleb Baldwin to Young Dutch Sam) definitely fought in an era when there were no weight based categories, and thus no question of there having been a 'lightweight champion', no possibility of them having won or vacated the title, etc. These fighters were acknowledged as the best fighters of their approximate weight at the time, which is really all that can be said. Anything else is simply anachronistic.

With regard to the other UK fighters listed, up to perhaps the 1860s, there is maybe some possibility of an emerging sensibility of catchweight bouts being arranged at specific weight limits. What is really needed, however, is solid proof of which fighters (if any) were definitely referred to as 'Lightweight Champion', which bouts were definitely considered to have been for the 'Lightweight Championship', etc. The important part here would be finding references in sources written at the time, not finding that somebody writing in, say, the 1970s considered a given fighter to be 'de facto' lightweight champion of the 1820s, which is obviously a different thing entirely.

After the introduction of the Queensbury rules prizefighting began to disappear in England and the bareknuckle focus switched to the US. The organisation there was no doubt different to that in England. Maybe there is an argument for altering this article to trace the history of the lightweight championship only in the US, but to precede that by saying that although there was no lightweight category (or championship) in English prizefighting, the premier fighters at that weight were generally accepted to have been Caleb Baldwin (c.1800), Dutch Sam (1800s), Jack Randall (1810s), etc. Axad12 (talk) 19:18, 18 February 2023 (UTC)