After dropping a majority decision to Stephen Fulton in November of 2021, Brandon Figueroa briefly stood by as Fulton worked through the formalities of his post-fight interview with Jim Gray. Even though Fulton led with compliments for his opponent, Figueroa was too agitated with the decision not going his way to hear them.

“This was a war, this was a tough fight, this was a tough person,” said Fulton as he extended his hand to Figueroa.

“You really think you won the fight?”, asked Figueroa. “I hurt you like five, six times.”

After a back-and-forth that increased in volume before Gray wrestled control of the mic once again, the two agreed verbally to “run it back.”

But Figueroa’s certainty that the decision should have gone his way on that night shouldn’t be mistaken for complacency. According to CompuBox, Figueroa landed 314 of 1060 punches to Fulton’s 269 of 726 overall, a strong evidentiary submission in his argument for being the winner, but Figueroa was focused on everything in between those numbers. From the moment he left the ring to today, just days away from the highly-anticipated rematch, he's found himself agonizing over what he could have done better.

“As soon as the fight finished, as soon as I finished, I knew what I had to do, I knew how to beat this guy,” Figueroa told The Ring. “I knew my mistakes, I knew what I did wrong. I'm the hardest critic on myself, you know, I'm very hard on myself. Literally, after as soon as the fight finished, I was just playing back the fight over and over and over, and I knew it was going to be a close one, but I thought I'd edged it just a little bit since I was putting the pressure, since I was making the fight interesting, since I hurt him multiple times.”

Figueroa and Fulton will meet once again this Saturday as the co-feature of the PBC on Prime pay-per-view headlined by David Benavidez and David Morrell. It’s a bout that feels as though it’s flying under the radar, competing with the litany of high-profile fights on the schedule in the coming weeks, including the main event happening just afterwards. In some ways, it’s the same fate their first fight suffered on year-end ballots in 2021, as fights like Fury-Wilder III and Usyk-Joshua received most of the voting attention, despite the fact that Fulton-Figueroa I might have provided the best sustained action of any fight in the year.

Fittingly, what’s central to Figueroa’s game plan this time around is drawing more attention to what’s happening—in his case, to the judges.

“I knew the adjustments I needed to make right after the fight and especially a couple months later, I really, really, really knew ‘okay this is what I had to do, this is what I must do, this is what I what I locked on, just to I guess make it more noticeable, in other words. You know, because like I said, I thought I thought I won the fight, but the only thing in my head was making it noticeable that I won,” said Figueroa.

The circumstances surrounding this fight are much different this time around. In 2021, the two entered as junior featherweight titleholders, with Fulton unifying in victory. Fulton remained in the weight class, where his profile exploded thanks to a massive bout against pound-for-pound great Naoya Inoue, in which he was stopped in eight rounds. In his subsequent bout, Fulton moved up to 126 where he escaped with a split-decision victory over Carlos Castro on the Canelo Alvarez-Edgar Berlanga undercard. Figueroa, meanwhile, moved up to 126 immediately after the bout and resumed his success on the world level, stopping the aforementioned Castro before picking up the interim WBC title with a win over Mark Magsayo, one he defended with a knockout win over Jessie Magdaleno last May.

The move up in weight seemed to be an instant refresh for Figueroa, who says he struggled mightily to make 122 for the first Fulton fight, and entered the bout knowing it would be his final fight at the weight class even upon signing the contract. With this context, it’s astonishing that the 28-year old Weslaco, TX native was able to eclipse the thousand punch mark in the first fight.

“That's literally the thing that I think about the most,” said Figueroa. “When I barely made weight, weak and everything, and I do look at that fight in that way, where I like I said I managed to hurt him three times, I took the fight to him, I threw so many punches. I didn't feel the strongest, per se. I can say that I didn't feel the strongest, didn't feel the explosiveness, I didn't feel you know…I just felt weak. I felt like, I don't know how to explain it but yeah, I didn't feel a hundred per cent, percent maybe like sixty or seventy per cent, but I mean look at what I did, and you know coming this Saturday, it's gonna be a whole different story.”

It’s reasonable, and frankly tempting as a fan and viewer, to assume that a version of Figueroa that isn’t weight-drained will simply be an even higher-octane version of his volume-punching self. That may very well turn out to be the case, however, Figueroa is either keeping his cards close to his vest, or foreshadowing a wholesale change in approach after imagining what he might do differently this time around for over three years.

“It's gonna be a whole different version of Brandon that he probably doesn't even expect so I'm, I'm excited to get in there, and he's definitely gonna be surprised, I can tell you that,” said Figueroa.