Darius Fulghum

Darius Fulghum

HOUSTON (February 28, 2020) – He stands 6’1” tall, weighs 201 lbs., and, as of December 2019, fought his way onto the USA Boxing Olympic Qualification Team.  His name is Darius Fulghum.

“I am the representative for 201 pounds of 91 kilograms.  There are only 13 people that are on this team, eight men and five women in each respective weight class.   All I have left to do are the two opportunities to qualify,” Fulghum explained about the next phase of his Olympic journey.  “We all have two opportunities to qualify.  The first one is in Argentina [in March].  We go there to compete against everyone in the Americas to get our spot.  And for me, I have to get Top 3 at that tournament.  If not, but I will, we go one more round in Paris, that’s the World Boxing tournament.”

Darius’s confidence in his ability to achieve his goals is just in his nature.  The El Paso, Texas-born son of a retired Army First Sergeant is likely the first registered nurse who graduated from a historically black college/university (HBCU) to make the USA Olympic team.

“I’m the baby of the family, and I didn’t move around as much as my siblings did, but I did live in El Paso and Florida.  I was in Germany, and I moved back [to the States] to Fort Hood, and Fort Hood is where I grew up.”

Body Conscious
Darius’s three siblings include big sister, Kristen Howard, brother DeJuan Fulghum, and younger sister Katrice Lowe, who is in the U.S. Air Force.  All of them have been a part of his journey to becoming a boxer, which, when he began, he didn’t have the “look” of an athlete.

“In high school, I was a big, chunky kid,” he said about growing up and surviving the teasing from his siblings.

Darius Fulghum

 

Darius’s dad, Tim Fulghum, whom all the kids and his wife call “Pop,” said his son always tells the truth about his size.

Kosheryl Fulgam with Gasha Fulghum, Darius Fulghum, Kosheryl Fulghum, and Tim Fulghum

The Fulghums

“Darius was F-A-T.  Do you know what a singlet is?  It’s what the wrestlers wear.  When he wore it [for the first time], I told my wife, ‘Oh my gosh!’  He was 5’6’ and about 170 lbs.  He didn’t carry it well,” he recalled with a jolly laugh. “It wasn’t P-H-A-T, it was F-A-T.  But he got tall.  In the 11th grade, he got tall and started winning.”

His big brother DeJuan agreed with Pop.

“When he was in high school, he did have baby fat, and he was a little chubbier.  But he started putting more work in and we noticed how much work he put in and how good he started becoming.  And then we started seeing his body transform,” his brother recalled.

Becoming an Athlete

Pop said each of his children had to be committed to whatever sport they chose.  And Darius knew no different.

“The thing I told my kids, if you’re going to do a sport, know your sport.  Read up on the history, and you must put the hours in, you’ve got to put the work in,” Pop Fulghum said. “When I was a boy, I loved sports.  But my father was disabled.  So I didn’t have anyone to help me be good.  I didn’t know how to do it.  That’s where my push and drive come from for my kids.”

The Fulghum Sons

The Fulghum sons

Darius’s mom Kosheryl Fulghum was the first to learn of his boxing dream.

“He was probably in middle school when he first brought up boxing to me.  I took him to a boxing gym in downtown [Killeen], I think Tim was in Iraq at that time, so I really didn’t take it too seriously at that time.  We brushed it off at that point.  In high school, that’s when he decided on his own that’s what he wanted to do,” Kosheryl recalled.

His brother, DeJuan, is well-known throughout the Southwest Athletic Conference (SWAC). In 2010, as captain of Texas Southern University (TSU), he was the number one-ranked NCAA Football Championship Subdivision Defense in the nation and led TSU to its first lone SWAC Championship title.

“When Darius was wrestling, he wasn’t good when he started off.  But in his junior year, something took off.  He ended going to state in his junior and senior year in wrestling,” DeJuan recalled.

He also remembered how the family began to learn about Darius’s interest in boxing.

“One day he was slap boxing with some friends, and they were just playing around.  But he came home saying, ‘Dad!  I think I want to box!’  And we were like, ‘Really? OK.’  It came out of nowhere to us, but we weren’t sure.  But we’re very supportive of Darius,” said DeJuan, who went undrafted as a free agent into the NFL in 2011, the year of the lockout. He was later picked up by the Detroit Lions and played in three preseason games before being released.

Big sister Kristen Howard, who is a social worker in North Dakota, readily admits to knowing nothing about boxing—even today—but she supported her baby brother from the start.

“He just told me what he wanted to do.  I asked him how we’re going to get it done.  And I said we will go for it!” said Howard, who also attended two HBCUs—Florida A&M University (FAMU) as an undergraduate and Clark-Atlanta University for her master’s degree.  “Just a year into it, he was like ‘I want to take this far.  I want to take this to the Olympics!’  I was like, ‘You can box in the Olympics?’”

Although his sister is on a learning curve when it came to boxing, one thing she knows is Darius is a thinker and a planner, but she still had reservations.

“In the Olympics and professionally, they don’t wear the headgear, and that was my biggest concern.  But he’s a nurse.  He knows what’s going to be best.  He knows how to defend his head as best as possible.  He’ll know when too much is too much.  So, I have all the faith and positiveness that he’ll make the best decisions.  We as a family, we support him.”

Becoming a Nurse

After graduating from high school in 2015, Darius left the wrestling match and focused on boxing.

“I started getting serious about my health and being fascinated by the human body and learning about it, and that’s how I got more into science, and it’s why I chose nursing.”

Darius also credits his father for planting the seed about becoming a nurse.

“My dad was the one who pushed me into it.  When I was in high school, I didn’t really know where I wanted to go, but he said they really need men, and it’s a good profession.  It’s never stagnant.  You always have something to do,” Darius recalled.  “The fact that you can help people is the most rewarding thing.”

His mother knew Darius would also achieve his goals academically if he attended an HBCU.

“Growing up in Tallahassee right there at FAMU, I have relatives who actually graduated from FAMU.  That’s what we wanted for our children; we wanted them to have that same experience,” Mrs. Fulghum said.

So, his boxing-nursing plan would take him from Central Texas College in Killeen to Houston.

“There were more opportunities in Houston than there were in Killeen,” his brother said. “He moved in with me, and he applied to the University of Texas’ nursing program in Houston and, of course, Prairie View.  UT did not accept him, but Prairie View did. He would fight when he could and when his schedule at Prairie View allowed him to.”

Nursing Student Darius

When Darius began at Prairie View A&M’s College of Nursing, Dean Betty Adams, Ph.D., said he told everyone that he was going to be a boxer.

“One of the things he talked about when he was a student was that he was going to finish his nursing program first, and then immediately after licensure, he was going to start working out because it was always his dream to be athletically involved,” Adams said.

While at PVAMU, Darius won the 2018 Golden Gloves for his division.  But he had to temporarily hang up the gloves to focus on nursing.  His parents said Darius is very bright, and school came easy to him, but his final year in nursing school proved to be a tough opponent.

Darius Fulghum

“He already knows to stay focused.  We always preached that, as far as getting an education,” his mother said.  “After he won the Golden Gloves, his last semester of school, that was the hardest part.  He had to make sure he was there in class and the lab.”

“I started boxing in 2015, and throughout out all my experiences through life, I would say that getting my degree is probably the hardest thing I’ve done.   I’m going to the Olympics, and I’m still saying it was hard, actually trying to manage both was hard.  But, oh man! PV challenged me.”

From RN to the Ring

Darius graduated from the College of Nursing with his Bachelor of Science in Nursing in May 2019.  In June, he passed the nursing exam to become a Registered Nurse.  For the rest of 2019, he focused on making the USA Boxing Team.

At the tryout tournament in Lafayette, Louisiana, Darius came in as the 8th seed.  And his first match was against the 1st seed.

“And he whooped him!” exclaimed Pop Fulghum.

His parents said their son soared.

“He went through that tournament, and he made it all the way to the championship round.  And, as a mother, I’m going to say they robbed my child,” Kosheryl said of the final match.  “The commentators said the same as well.  So, when they said it was a unanimous decision, you should’ve saw me…I was walking with my hands up in the air!  Because I knew he had won that fight, and they gave it to the other guy.”

Family At Team Trials

The Fulghum family at the U.S. Olympic Team Trials.

Why I Love My HBCU

Passion and supporting one another are common threads for the Fulghums.  And they attribute it to their HBCU experiences.

“From the 5th grade on up, all I knew was that I was going to FAMU,” said Pop. “I got the HBCU fever, and my daughter wanted to follow in my footsteps.  She played in the band.  DeJuan played football at Texas Southern.  And so, when Darius got accepted into Prairie View, I was ecstatic.”

Darius Fulghum

“I went to FAMU.  I marched in the ‘100’ and all of that.  However, you never know.  And when the music thing didn’t work out, I had my backup plan to fall on,” said Howard, mom of two, whose husband is in the U.S. Air Force.  “My dad always told us to have that backup plan that if this doesn’t work out, what are you going to do?  Not only did Darius have a backup plan, but he’s also got a backup plan that is job security.  Once he’s done boxing, once his career is done, he can go back and still have enough time to start a career as a nurse.”

Big brother DeJuan agrees.

He said, “HBCUs, they’ve done so much for our family.  When nobody else was there, HBCUs were there for us.  I’m super proud.  I think it’s so cool that I can be able to say my brother went to the Olympics, and my brother is an Olympian.  There is no higher honor for our country when it comes to sports than representing our country.”

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By Michael Douglas