NEW YORK CITY – Heading into Saturday’s IBF lightweight title eliminator, the question on the minds of boxing observers was whether Andy Cruz was ready to make the leap from prospect to contender. After five rounds of a one-sided beating, the answer appears to be a resounding yes.

An Olympic gold medalist from Cuba, Cruz put on his most impressive performance to date as a pro, stopping Japanese contender Hironori Mishiro at 1 minute, 13 seconds of the fifth round at The Theater at Madison Square Garden.

Cruz, now trained in Philadelphia by Derrick “Bozy” Ennis, could scarcely miss Mishiro, whose only head movement was the incidental movement that resulted from the force of Cruz’s punches. With his target set firmly on the middle where Mishiro’s head reliably rested, Cruz began to land flashy combinations, doubling up punches on both sides. Looking to test the limits of his dominance, Cruz successfully landed a flurry of 4-5 right hands in a row, all of which landed effectively.

Apparently realizing that he couldn’t miss if he tried, Cruz decided to sit down on a few of those right hands, dropping Mishiro for the first time in Round 3 with a 1-2. Mishiro beat the count, but his tactic of wading in without a jab and trying to make it a war made him a sitting duck for the unforgiving assault of Cruz.

As if the fight wasn’t already one-sided enough, Cruz sent Mishiro back down to the canvas once more before the bell as a result of the innumerable right hands that landed in sequence, a la Floyd Mayweather Jnr- Arturo Gatti.

Mishiro, who had won five straight coming into the Cruz fight, didn’t travel to the United States just to lie down without a fight, however. Mishiro defied logic in the fourth by pressing forward, firing heavy punches that didn’t land cleanly but gave Cruz something to think about. Still, Mishiro’s inability to cut the ring off allowed Cruz to move about the ring with little concern.

At this point in the fight, the biggest threat to Cruz was whether his hands – made of bone and tendons, like any other boxer – would be able to keep landing with this frequency. After Mishiro’s brief comeback in the fourth round, Cruz put a halt to the fight the following round as he peppered Mishiro with unanswered blows – including a pair of rights that knocked his head back – bringing about the stoppage.

The one-sidedness of the fight was underscored by the 47.1 percent power-connect percentage by Cruz (88 of 187 attempts), for a total of 146 lands in 372 attempts, according to CompuBox. Mishiro was credited with landing just 24 total punches – 15 of which were power shots – out of 174 attempts, for a connect percentage of 13.8 percent.

Cruz, who turned pro in July of 2023, now appears to be the next challenger in line to face IBF titleholder Raymond Muratalla, 23-0 (17 KOs), of West Covina, California. Muratalla, who defeated Zaur Abdullaev last month by unanimous decision to win the interim title, became the full titleholder this week after Vasiliy Lomachenko announced his retirement and vacated the belt.

Ryan Songalia is a reporter and editor for BoxingScene.com and has written for ESPN, the New York Daily News, Rappler, The Guardian, Vice and The Ring magazine. He holds a Master’s degree in Journalism from the Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism and is a member of the Boxing Writers Association of America. He can be reached at ryansongalia@gmail.com or on Twitter at @ryansongalia.