Chris Byrd

CTL-E-7123 · Person · other · 1970–present

VERIFIED evidence grade — build store (JSON graph)

Combined Graph record U-07995 · provenance: build store (JSON graph), record CTL-E-7123.

Christopher Cornelius Byrd, born August 15, 1970, in Flint, Michigan, was trained from childhood by his father, Joe Byrd, a renowned Flint trainer who helped coach the 1992 United States Olympic team. His amateur record ran 275–10 with three national championships, and at the 1992 Barcelona Olympics he won the middleweight silver medal, losing the final to Cuba's Ariel Hernández. A natural middleweight who turned professional in 1993, Byrd fought at about 215 pounds against heavyweights of 240 to 270 pounds, surviving on quickness and head movement. On April 1, 2000, in Berlin, taking the fight on about a week's notice as a replacement for Donovan Ruddock, he won the WBO heavyweight title when the undefeated Vitali Klitschko — ahead on all three scorecards — retired on his stool after the ninth round, unable to continue because of a shoulder injury. Byrd lost the title six months later to Wladimir Klitschko, then beat Evander Holyfield by unanimous decision on December 14, 2002, in Atlantic City to win the vacant IBF heavyweight title, which he defended four times before Wladimir Klitschko stopped him in the seventh round on April 22, 2006. He retired in 2009 with a record of 41 wins, 5 losses and 1 draw. His first cousin Lamon Brewster also held the WBO heavyweight title.

The record

• Also known as: Christopher Cornelius Byrd

Notes

Sports Encyclopedia roster CTL-SPE-0523. Date variance: the Greater Flint Area Sports Hall of Fame biography dates the Vitali Klitschko fight April 4, 2000; BoxRec, Wikipedia and the contemporaneous Cyber Boxing Zone preview fix it at April 1, 2000, which the description carries. Notice-period variance: the Flint Hall gives seven days' preparation; Byrd's own later account says nine — the description carries 'about a week's notice,' which both support. The Lamon Brewster tie is carried in prose only (BoxRec: first cousin, himself a former WBO heavyweight champion); Brewster is not a graph record, so no edge is staged. Curator's Judgment (DRAFT): Byrd's record is the craft answer to the size era — a middleweight by birth who twice held heavyweight titles by making much larger men miss, and whose two championship wins, over an injured Klitschko and an aging Holyfield, are stated exactly as they happened rather than inflated or discounted.

Sources

• Greater Flint Area Sports Hall of Fame. "Byrd, Chris." GFASHOF. Accessed 2026-11-04. (primary source · build store)
• BoxRec. "Chris Byrd." BoxRec Wiki. Accessed 2026-11-04. (build store)
• Wikipedia. "Chris Byrd." Accessed 2026-11-04. (build store)

More person records

• Maurice Cox
• Maurice Joshua
• Maurice Smith
• Maurice West
• Maurice White
• Maverick City Music

Browse the full directory: all entity records

Record CTL-E-7123 · Combined Graph record U-07995 · CultureTechLens Knowledge Graph · 3 sources.
Directory: all entity records · the knowledge graph

Researched and maintained by the CultureTechLens research program · CultureTechLens Combined Graph, Release 2026-11-04. Corrections are public: the corrections log.

Cite this record

Citation guidance for teachers, journalists, and funders: How to Cite Us.

From the Archive

The archive in pictures

The people, places, and institutions this work documents. Photographs from the CultureTechLens research record — rights-cleared, credited, and cited like everything else here.