My friend asked me which heavyweight champions have regained their championship, ie broken the they never come back -myth. He remembered Patterson and Ali. So I began to wonder. How would you answer this? If we go by alphabets, you get joke answers such as Witherspoon, Moorer, Vladimir, Hide, Byrd, Vitali etc that are clearly against the idea. Even if you narrow it down to the big three, you'd have Spoon, Valuev, Chagaev, Ruiz and so on. In my opinion there are five guys who are undeniable: Patterson, Ali (twice), Holy (lost&won against Bowe), Foreman and Lewis (lost an won against Rahman, not counting the WBC junk) Questionable would be Tyson (did he regain his title against Bruno, since many saw him as the best heavyweight then?), Holyfield's third time (was the Tyson fight for the championship?) and Bowe (did he become a champion after the third fight with Holy?) I miss for the times when it was easy to answer such questions
Patterson, Ali (x2), Holyfield, Lewis (just the once though). I try to go with lineage wherever possible. The Klitschko reign is where it gets muddied as Lewis retired and Vitali was the best guy who filled the vacuum, then Vitali took a hiatus and Wlad took over, but then Vitali came back so who is the Champ? They're obviously not gonna fight each other and both have legit claims so it gets a bit fucked up from the Vitali-Peters fight as to whether Vitali was "regaining" the crown or just defending something he'd never lost in the first place.
You have to include Foreman with his win over Moorer though, right? It was obvious he wasn't the best heavyweight, but Moorer was the universally recognized champ
