Stephen Fulton is motivated to become a world champion in a third weight class October 25 in Las Vegas. The WBC featherweight champion is also confident that knocking off O'Shaquie Foster will help him achieve his ultimate boxing goal. "This fight will just put me in the Hall of Fame," Fulton said during a virtual press conference recently. "It’ll just stamp it. It’ll be like the icing on the cake for me, so that’s why it’s an important job, an important task for me." Philadelphia’s Fulton, 31, was a unified champ in the junior featherweight division. His only loss came to Japanese legend Naoya Inoue (31-0, 27 KOs), who dropped Fulton twice and stopped him in the eighth round of their full title unification fight in July 2023 in Tokyo.

Fulton (23-1, 8 KOs) has since beaten Carlos Castro (30-3, 14 KOs) and Brandon Figueroa (26-2-1, 19 KOs) in featherweight fights. He took the WBC 126-pound championship from Figueroa, winning their rematch by unanimous decision February 1 in Las Vegas. Fulton moved up to 130 without defending the featherweight title because he had so much difficulty making weight for the second Figueroa fight. Foster, The Ring’s No. 1 junior lightweight, feels Fulton made a mistake by choosing to fight him. “He’s a fighter, so he believes in his skills,” Fulton said. “It’s the same as me. There’s nothing I can say bad about that, because I would say the same thing. I believe in my skills and my job is to show him that there is levels, experience matters. I’ve been in there with four different world champions, so it’s like my job is to show him that I’m experienced, show the experience and my talent as well.” In addition to his points victories over Figueroa, Fulton is the only opponent to beat since-crowned IBF featherweight champ Angelo Leo (26-1, 12 KOs) and defeated former IBF/WBA 122-pound champ Daniel Roman (29-4-1, 10 KOs) in a title unification bout. While Fulton fought Inoue as a unified 122-pound champ, Foster (23-3, 12 KOs) acknowledged facing him on the Sebastian Fundora-Keith Thurman undercard heightens the significance.

“I guess I’d say it’s the biggest moment of my career,” said Foster, a native of Orange, Texas, in his 13th-year as a pro, “because this fight will take me where I wanna go in the sport of boxing.” The Foster-Fulton fight will be the co-feature of a Premier Boxing Champions pay-per-view show at MGM Grand Garden Arena. DraftKings’ odds on Foster-Fulton are almost exactly even.