Does anyone have a list of the bare knuckle heavyweight champs prior to John L. Sullivan? I know Sullivan is considered the last champ under the London Prize Ring rules but who all came before him? Or did they not really have an official champion before this? Also, were there any weight classes other than heavyweight at that time?
I wish cyberboxing would attempt to do the same thing with some of the lower weights. They include information on lightweights and middleweights explaining that the men were considered the champ for a time, but there's no real list of lineage like there is for heavyweights. I was trying to piece things together using that site and boxrec to figure out who was the best each decade for my p4p thread. It's incomplete but I did manage to find some names for that. lightweight champions 1820s Barney Aaron 1850s Joe Goss Young Barney Aaron Johnny Moneghan 1860s Owney Geoghegan Sam Collyer Marcellus Baker Arthur Chambers Bat Mullins Billy Edwards 1870s Charlie Norton Billy Edwards Arthur Chambers Marcellus Baker 1880 Jack McAuliffe Middleweight champions 1870s Mike Donovan Seems like you could track lightweight, welterweight, middleweight, and light heavyweight back to around 1850 if you wanted.
some of the old images of fighters from the 19th century are astounding. to think we can see what they looked really like, these big muscled dumb killers, what were they really like.
