Stephen Fulton had plenty of footage that displayed his dominance over Daniel Roman, but one in particular seemed to sum up his performance.
In the closing seconds of the 10th round, Fulton stuck his tongue out at the challenger and stalked away from danger as Roman missed his punches. For Fulton, Saturday night was a boxing masterclass.
He outplayed Roman in a unanimous decision victory to retain the WBC and WBO junior featherweight titles. The judges’ scorecards showed the fight was as lopsided as it looked – 120-108, 120-108, 119-109.
“I made a hell of a statement tonight,” Fulton said in the post-fight interview on Showtime. “I prepared for this. I told you I was going to make it easy and fight based on how I woke up. And I woke up feeling great.”
The punch statistics confirmed what the judges and a sold-out crowd of 4,695 inside the Armory in Minneapolis saw. According to CompuBox, Fulton more than doubled Roman in connected punch rate, from 36.2% to 16.8%. When it comes to power punches, Fulton landed almost 46% of them.
Early on, Fulton (20-0, 8 KOs) looked for an overhand right hand to catch Roman, a former unified champion in the weight class. As the fight progressed, the undefeated fighter from Philadelphia used his movement to unbalance Roman while looking for windows to land his own punches.
In the seventh round, Roman (29-4-1, 10 KOs) tried to push the tempo with Fulton who pulled away. Judge Nathan Palmer scored the inning for Roman, the only consolation point of the night. Otherwise, it was all Fulton, who had full command inside the ring.
“He knew how to use his distance,” Roman said in his post-fight interview. “It was difficult for me to adapt to his distance because he was boxing.”
Fulton continued his rise in the 122-pound division that made him one of the best fighters in the sport. In January 2021, he beat Angelo Leo to win the WBO belt. Ten months later, he defeated Brandon Figueroa by a majority decision to also acquire the WBC title.
After the last fight, Fulton said he wanted to become the undisputed division champion by taking on Murodjon Akhmadaliev, who holds the other two major titles. Akhmadaliev won the WBA and IBF belts by defeating Roman via split decision in January 2020. Roman said he thinks Fulton is the best junior featherweight in the world.
And Fulton is more than willing to prove him right.
Said Fulton: “We have to finish this.”