Results and highlights: Stephen Fulton unifies 122 lbs title in classic with Brandon Figueroa

What a day for boxing.

First we had George Kambosos Jr’s shocking upset of Teofimo Lopez for a new unified lightweight champ, and over in Las Vegas there was a 12-round war between unified super-bantamweight champion Stephen Fulton (19-0, 8 KOs) and Brandon Figueroa (22-1-1, 17 KOs). Fulton was the WBO champion while Figueroa held the WBC title, and it took every ounce of energy from the Philadelphia native to get a majority decision win to unify the two belts and remain undefeated.

To give you an idea of how insane this fight was, Fulton and Figueroa landed just 38 jabs combined. The other 545 punches that did connect were power shots. Figueroa threw over 1,000 punches while Fulton threw over 700, but Fulton was the more efficient of the two in terms of connect percentage.

This was a phone booth fight and a war of attrition, with bombs exchanged repeatedly and Fulton doing some excellent work attacking Figueroa on counters and lacing his opponent with uppercuts. Figueroa had the eye-catching body shots and looked to wear on Fulton, but neither man showed any signs of slowing down their output. The only time it looked as if either fighter was hurt was Fulton in the 10th round off a left hand, but he wasn’t close to being knocked down. The fight was a textbook example of not automatically awarding rounds to the boxer who’s moving forward and being the aggressor. Ultimately though so many rounds were too close to call that you could’ve seen it either way. Two judges had it Fulton’s way and the other had it a draw.

Official result: Stephen Fulton def. Brandon Figueroa by majority decision (114-1114, 116-112, 116-112)

Unfortunately, much like Lopez after his fight with Kambosos, Figueroa put a damper on things by claiming he was robbed and that everyone knew who the real winner was. And yet, despite wanting the rematch he also said he wants to move up to 126. Oh well. Maybe he’ll cool off after losing for the first time.

Watch the highlights below: