Khan was KTFO by Prescott not Peterson. Also I don't think you can make this argument for Thompson. Both of the times he was resurgent in his career post the KO losses to Wlad he was facing lesser opposition. The first Price fight was only seen as a competitive fight because of the hype surrounding Price. In reality his previous level of competition was nothing on Thompson's and he was facing his first true test. Still good wins for Thompson but I don't think they are any better than his losing performances against the best current heavyweight. Also i think the best criteria for this would be in instances where a fighter has been KO'd and then faced and beaten their conqueror in an immediate rematch and won (preferably also by KO). Also Henry Armstrong is an example of a fighter coming back stronger after a KO. He lost his first bout by KO and look what he went on to achieve.
George Foreman came back after retirement to become the oldest HW champ ever. How does that need explaining?
Barrera is a great example, in the first jones fight it was ruled a DQ win for jones because barrreras team stepped in the ring to stop the fight, jones dropped barrera witt a perfect shot and had him in deep deep trouble on the ropes, barrera team stepped in to stop it because they did not want barrera taking anymore punishment because the ref was about 10 seconds from stopping it regardless. Barrera solodified himself as an ATG after the first loss to jones
Yes, his first loss was a DQ in the first fight with Junior Jones. The controversy around it was that the punches landed by Jones appeared to be after the bell for that round. Barreras corner entered the ring as the bell had gone but Barrera was DQd. In a related but off topic note - Barrera had a fight early in his career (would need to check my DVDs to see who it was) where he knocked the guy spark out with a punch clearly landed after the bell but was awarded a KO win.
tommy morrison(mercer) terry norris(jackson) evander holyfield(bowe) lennox lewis(mccall) wlad klitscho(puritty)
He was chased into retirement in embarrassing fashion, and dragged a guy out of rehab and couldn't even drop him though he had his arms at his sides.:deal
In recent times the Honour has to go to, John Ruiz he managed to come back from an Execution. He got brutally destroyed by David Tua in 20 seconds ended up in intensive care looked like his career was over, and David Tua looked like a dead cert all time future great fighter. Even stranger is how ultimately John Ruiz ended up having a better over all career then David Tua. Here is the Link to the fight..........http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=-M5mPGbfzIc
Ok. Yeah that loss was the one that taught him that he wasn't gonna be able to just roll through everybody and that working on his defense was worthwhile. Even though he lost the rematch, he kept improving his boxing which paid off bigtime against the very dangerous natural slugger Naseem Hamed.