despite the fact that mccullough had neither been knocked down nor been defeated by a referee stoppage, hamed, much like in his previous fight against vasquez, predicted that he would do a "demolition job" on mccullough and obtain a knockout victory between the third and fifth rounds. however, hamed came nowhere near scoring a knockdown over mccullough, and after failing to do hurt the iron-chinned mccullough in the early rounds, simply used his boxing skills to outpoint mccullough. ultimately hamed and mccullough went the full 12 rounds, with neither fighter scoring a knockdown. it was only the second time in hamed's career that he went the full 12 rounds after having not done so since his twelfth professional fight in 1994 (his only other decision victory had come in a 6-round bout in 1992). the three judges all scored the fight in favor of hamed with scores of 116–112, 117–111 and 118–110 giving hamed the victory by unanimous decision, ending his 18–fight knockout streak.