Weslaco’s Brandon Figueroa suffered the first loss of his career against Stephen Fulton by way of a majority decision in a 122-pound title unification bout at Park Theater in Las Vegas on Saturday night.
Two judges scored the fight 116-112 in favor of Fulton, while the third saw the fight a 114-114 draw, giving “Cool Boy Steph” the victory in a majority decision. Fulton (20-0, 8 KOs) is now the WBC and WBO super bantamweight champion. The loss dropped Figueroa’s professional record to 22-1-1.
Figueroa threw more punches (1,060 to 727), landed more punches (314 to 269), landed more body shots (106 to 85) and more power punches (298 to 246).
Fulton started the fight by picking his spots from the outside, but it wasn’t long before Figueroa turned the contest into a close quarters brawl. Both Figueroa and Fulton had their moments throughout with “The Heartbreaker” doing most of his damage to the body when pressing his opponent backwards. Fulton attempted to take the fight to Figueroa, but the latter refused to back down as the two repeatedly battled for ring control. Fulton felt he landed the cleaner shots of between the two.
Fulton cut Figueroa above his right eye, while Figueroa felt he rocked Fulton repeatedly during the second half of the fight.
Figueroa said he was robbed of the fight with the majority decision during the post-fight interview with Showtime, to which Fulton responded he’s open to a rematch.
