Darius Fulghum is getting back to his wrestling roots ahead of Saturday’s fight with David Stevens. Two pivotal figures laid the groundwork for the super middleweight’s relentless style: his older brother DeJuan and trainer Darnell Pierce.
“[Darius] was old enough to see me, but too young to be a part of the journey,” DeJuan said of his younger brother by seven years. “I wasn’t the most gifted athlete when it came to my abilities, so I had to make up for that with my hard work and dedication.”
DeJuan was a linebacker at Texas Southern University. He played a few preseason games for the Detroit Lions when they had Matthew Stafford, Calvin Johnson and Ndamukong Suh. DeJuan explained that his younger brother passed the look test but was always considered undersized for linebacker. That created a chip-on-the-shoulder mentality.
Darius, 14-1 (12 KOs), had to find his own sport, which he duly did at Ellison High School in Killeen, Texas.
“It wasn’t until his junior year of wrestling that the light switch clicked for him,” DeJuan said. “He found something he was good at.”
Darius, 29, remembers it well.
“Wrestling was my first love. I started wrestling in high school,” he said. “Once I finished wrestling, I had this itch. I had to do something else. Originally, I was going to do MMA, but then I started boxing and I fell in love with boxing.”
His love of boxing was surprising to his family members, but they – especially DeJuan – wanted to support him. “As he is going through it, he is taking his licks, but he keeps getting back up,” DeJuan said. “Talking with him, he said he saw me do the same thing.”
Inspired by his brother, those formative years were important. So much so, he’s reintroduced himself to them.
“I got back to wrestling for this camp,” Darius said. “I started wrestling once a week, just to get back to that mindset, conditioning, strength training, that wrestlers have.”
Darius went back to the basics and recalled wrestling practices he used to hate. Drills that were boring and grueling, not unlike what Pierce put him through as a boxer. Those wrestling drills now allow him to form insight into other fighters.
“We had to stay in our wrestling stance for so long,” Fulghum said. “I recognize now, as I transitioned into boxing, how often people break their stance.”
As an amateur, he came to the sport late. That is where he met his coach, Pierce. Darius admits that he felt like Pierce was trying to chase him off when he first started training with him.
“What matters the most to me is that it brought us so close together,” Darius said. “I vividly remember how hard those training sessions were, and at that time, I was in college, too.”
Darius would drive an hour to train with Pierce. That is when he was introduced to the unique methods. Such as eight the hard way: sprinting 200 meters and then jogging backwards 100 meters, and repeating until you hit 800 meters. That was considered the warm-up.
“Those workouts were brutal,” Pierce said. “I was just trying to make it hard on him and see how disciplined he was.”
Fulghum fought three rounds for nine minutes as an amateur. He would then be pushed to run the bleachers for that same length – nonstop. Then came jabbing for 100 yards on a track. That was followed by jabbing for 100 yards along all eight lanes of the track. It was unconventional, but it put a premium on conditioning.
“Going into every fight, I know physically and mentally I put the work in,” Darius said. “I don’t have any doubts. When I was an amateur before we got together, one of my biggest fears was what would happen if I got tired?”
Pierce recalls Darius bringing people to train, and then they’d never come back.
“Drew is his cutman, and he was a young man who was in nursing school, and he was really into fitness,” Pierce explained. “Darius brought him, and he only came once. He showed up to the fights to do the cutman shit, but he only showed up to the workouts once.”
After roughly two years of competing as an amateur boxer, he’d enter national tournaments. DeJuan recalled a trip to Eastern Qualifiers for the Olympic Trials in 2019.
“We flew to Ohio. I never boxed before. I am there to support him,” DeJuan said. “Darius ends up losing pretty early in the tournament, and that was it.”
In hindsight, the loss wasn’t as bad as it seemed – it came to 2024 U.S. Olympic super heavyweight Joshua Edwards. The two brothers had a conversation: DeJuan asked Darius if he still wanted to box. Darius did, and he had one last chance. He could go to Oxnard, California, and attempt to qualify at the Last Chance Qualifiers before the 2020 Olympic Trials began.
“He ended up placing second, which was good enough for him to qualify for the Olympic Trials,” DeJuan said. “He came in as the underdog eight seed at the Olympic Trials and ran the table and won the tournament.”
“Going into these fights, I am trying to break someone’s will,” Darius added. “Confidence plays a big part in that. I want to leave doubt in people’s minds. At the same time, I am trying to set the tempo and tone early.”
Darius now looks to rebound from his first career loss, a close unanimous decision against Bektemir Melikuziev in May. He has sparred with Stevens, 15-2 (10 KOs), in the past. In fact, Stevens trains in the same area with coach Ronnie Shields. Stevens, a 25-year-old from Reading, Pennsylvania, has been labeled a slow starter, but he enters the bout coming off a unanimous decision victory over Petr Khamukov in June.
“I think as far as this fight goes, that plays into my advantage,” Fulghum said. “I want to set the tone. I have been saying that a lot in this camp.”
That determined mindset has always been there, according to his coach.
“Darius is the most disciplined person I have ever met in my entire life,” Pierce said. “Darius was a fat kid. Darius used to get bullied. He wasn’t what he is now. … Darius modeled himself after his older brother.”
Darius has a small team that is his family. His corner consists of Pierce, DeJuan, and his cutman Drew.
“Darnell knows me probably better than I know myself,” Darius said. “If boxing was over, my relationship with these people [in my corner] would still be close, we would still go to functions together, hanging out. That means everything to me.”
For DeJuan, he is now part of his younger brother's journey, one that his own hard work and dedication helped inspire.
“You never know who is watching you and the impact you can have on other people’s lives,” DeJuan said. “I knew he always looked up to me, but I could never quantify it. It wasn’t until he started his boxing journey that I started connecting the dots.”
