Mandalay Bay Resort, Las Vegas -- Former welterweight champion Ike Quartey (37-2, 31 KOs)scored a tenth round stoppage of Carlos Bojorquez (25-8-6). The one-sided bout was stopped by referee Joe Cortez at 2:12 of round ten to prevent Bojorquez from absorbing anymore damage.
The fight was Quartey's third of the year. In January, the Ghana native ended a five-year retirement.
Quartey dominated the opening round with a textbook left jab -- the reason that his nickname is "Bazooka." But Bojorquez came back strong in the second, backing Quartey up and seemingly hurting him on several occasions.
Slowly but surely, Quartey began to take over the fight. Although they spent most of the fifth and sixth rounds trading toe-to-toe, Quartey was getting the better of the action as he fired shots off the ropes.
He opened a cut over Bojorquez's left eye in the fourth round and the wound bled continuously the fight progressed.
By the 10th round, referee Joe Cortez had seen enough and stopped the fight at 2:12 even though there was no particular punch that was cause for the stoppage.
"He was suffering," Quartey said. "Maybe he could have stopped it earlier. I have gotten better every fight of my comeback. I am using both hands well."
Bojorquez, way behind on all three scorecards, landed just nine percent (74 of 797) of his punches compared to Quartey's 51 percent (269 of 528).
In his prime, Quartey was a welterweight champion whose only losses came in title fights to to Oscar De La Hoya for the welterweight title in 1999 and a junior middleweight championship fight against Fernando Vargas in 2000.
After winning a fight in Ghana in January, he won a 10-round decision against former 154-pound titlist Verno Phillips on June 18. Then came the fight against Bojorquez, a rugged journeyman who lost to Phillips for a vacant title.
Quartey promoter Lou DiBella thought his man looked good in the victory and hopes to line him up for a fight with either the winner of the Feb. 25 Shane Mosley-Vargas fight, Winky Wright, Vernon Forrest or even get Quartey a De La Hoya rematch.
