Gabriela Fundora is keeping her titles…
In a flawless performance, the 23-year-old Mexican American professional boxer retained her undisputed flyweight championship with a seventh-round TKO victory over Marilyn Badillo on Saturday at Frontwave Arena in Oceanside, California.
Fighting for the first time in 2025, Fundora, a southpaw who had a six-inch height advantage and a four-inch reach advantage, had no problem landing her lead jab and lead hook against the shorter Badillo, who employed feints to get inside but couldn’t find the way to shorten the distance.
Badillo had a good Round 4, landing a left uppercut on Fundora and going low to try to get inside, but most of the time, Fundora’s straight left found Badillo’s chin, stopping her attacks. By the end of the round, Badillo had redness under her right eye and a big hematoma on her forehead due to an unintentional headbutt.
After the fight, Fundora said she found her rhythm during the first round. She said she saw Badillo was “doing her ducking thing, but [she was] still always there.”
In the seventh round, Fundora overwhelmed Badillo with a flurry of punches, accentuated by a powerful straight left that forced Badillo to take a knee. Referee Rudy Barragan gave her the count, but Badillo didn’t want to continue.
According to CompuBox, Fundora landed 99 of her power punches compared with only 21 for Badillo.
“I think I’m maturing,” Fundora, from Coachella, California, said of her performance. “I knew the stoppage was going to come. It just again, how I wanted to place it, and I think with this one it was more of a relaxed kind of tempo.”
Fundora (16-0, 8 KOs) came into the bout as ESPN‘s No. 1-ranked flyweight, while Badillo (19-1-1, 3 KOs) was ranked No. 3.
Fundora made history in November by knocking out Gabriela Celeste Alaniz in Round 7 to become boxing’s youngest undisputed champion ever at 22. In that fight, Fundora added the WBO, WBC and WBA women’s flyweight titles to the IBF title she already owned.
Badillo, whose 19-fight winning streak was snapped, had never fought outside of Mexico. This was just her fourth bout at 10 rounds and her first title fight.
