FORT WORTH, Texas – Misery loves company, they say, so Golden Boy Promotions decided to match Darius Fulghum fresh off a defeat with a guy who lost to the same fighter.
Neither won, anyway.
Houston super middleweight Fulghum was coming off a May 30 unanimous decision loss to WBA second-ranked contender Bektemir Melikuziev in Las Vegas.
Pennsylvania’s David Stevens, 25, also lost to Melikuziev (by split decision) in late 2024.
Their discomfort was extended to the audience Saturday at Dickies Arena, when the lack of action between the pair solicited boos during the sequences with the most lulls.
The judges assigned to make sense of the hold-fest determined neither fighter won, scoring the bout 96-94 Fulghum and 95-95, 95-95.
Before that, middleweight Amari Jones, 15-0 (13 KOs), scored a third-round technical knockout of Shady Gamhour, capping a flurry with a hard right to the middle of the face and a follow-up head shot to end the bout at the 2-minute, 54-second mark.
“I pressed him and got him out of there,” Jones said after earlier dropping Gamhour in the third.
Gamhour is trained by Roy Jones Jnr.
In the DAZN undercard opener, 2024 US Olympian Joshua Edwards improved to 5-0 with his fifth knockout by finishing Zeno Vooris in the third round.
The fight was stopped at the 2-minute, 34-second mark after Edwards opened a cut at Vooris’ left eyebrow, prompting Vooris’ corner to stop the bout.
It was the first time Edwards went into the third round, as the power puncher took the time on this occasion to showcase his ability to jab with both hands.
Edwards’ punishment of Vooris, 5-2, convinced the Las Vegas fighter to back to the ropes and desperately cover, inspiring his corner’s stoppage.
Lance Pugmire is BoxingScene’s senior U.S. writer and an assistant producer for ProBox TV. Pugmire has covered boxing since the early 2000s, first at the Los Angeles Times and then at The Athletic and USA Today. He won the Boxing Writers’ Association of America’s Nat Fleischer Award in 2022 for career excellence.
