Chris Colbert made his statement.
The junior lightweight contender predicted he would knock out Jaime Arboleda on Saturday night and he delivered, stopping his Panamanian foe in the 11th round of a fight he had dominated.
Colbert (15-0, 6 KOs) is known for his boxing skills but wanted to demonstrate that he can also hurt his opponents. He did so several times at the Mohegan Sun casino in Uncasville, Conn.
Arboleda, supposedly a big puncher, threw more punches than Colbert but the latter landed the harder, cleaner shots. That was case whether the fighters stood toe-to-toe or Colbert took pot shots from the outside, whether Colbert fought from an orthodox stance or a southpaw.
Colbert took the fight out of Arboleda (16-2, 13 KOs) in the final seconds of Round 9, when he put the loser down with a left hook.
In Round 10, Arboleda didn’t fight with the aggression he had in the previous nine rounds and Colbert picked him apart. Then, in Round 11, Arboleda went down from a flurry of shots, got up and went down again from a combination.
Arboleda got up once again but he was hurt. Colbert unloaded one more barrage of hard punches, prompting referee Steve Willis to stop it. The official time was 1:37 of Round 11.
In preliminary bouts, junior welterweight prospect Richardson Hitchins (12-0, 5 KOs) defeated Argenis Mendez (25-6-3, 12 KOs) by a split decision in a 10-round junior welterweight fight.
And Ronald Ellis (18-1-2, 12 KOs) defeated Matvey Korobov (28-4-1, 14 KOs) when Korobov injured his Achilles tendon and couldn’t continue after five rounds.