South AFrica's Joseph Makaringe became the new WBC International welterweight champion when he stopped Ghana?s Philip Kotey in the eleventh round at Secunda on Friday night.

Referee Alfred Buqwana stopped the bout, rather controversially, at 1 min 52 s of the penultimate round after Kotey had taken a series of damaging blows to the head.

By then, Makaringe had built up a decent lead even though he had to take some hefty blows on the way.

Kotey and his helpers made it known that they were unhappy about the stoppage. The visitor could probably have seen out the fight, but was suffering enough damage for the veteran referee to make his call.

Makaringe, known as Smoking Joe, was down within the first 30 second of the fight for the vacant title as Kotey came in on fire. Makaringe sensible took the count after collecting a big right and slowly boxed his way out of trouble.

A distinctive pattern was established immediately, with Kotey winning the first minute of most rounds and Makaringe, also known as Slow Poison, dominating the rest of the round.

Kotey, hitting a little harder than Makaringe, had trouble putting more than two punches into any combination, but scored with some big upper-cuts.

The South African champion, on the other hand, missed with more punches than he landed and failed to realise how open Kotey was to the left hook. An exhibition of the art of self defence the fight was not, but it was certainly exciting and full of action.

Makaringe moved his record to 3-28-2 (23 stoppages) and Kotey dropped to 19-16-2, with one draw and 11 stoppages.