Baby-faced assassin Jesse Rodriguez is one step closer to becoming an undisputed 115-pound champion.

Rodriguez (22-0, 15 KOs) came in as The Ring and WBC junior bantamweight champion Saturday and collected the WBO belt that Phumelela Cafu (11-1-3, 8 KOs) carried by systematically breaking down and blasting the game South African in 10 rounds in front of nearly 10,000 at The Ford Center at The Star in Frisco, Texas.

After a competitive nine rounds, Rodriguez clocked and rocked Cafu with a crushing right hook that wobbled him in the final minute of the 10th. Cafu tried desperately to hold on as Rodriguez unleashed an attack, while referee Hector Afu came close to stopping the action.

Cafu dragged Rodriguez down, and when they got up his corner threw in the towel before the beating worsened at the 2:07 mark.

Rodriguez outlanded Cafu 218-144 but left with a welt near his left eye and an abrasion on his hand.

“It was a great performance and the best performance of my career against the toughest opponent and fight of my career,” said Rodriguez. “All credit goes to Cafu. He was a lot tougher than I thought he would be. He had better pop than I expected. I knew he had power, but not like that. He was in it to win it and had a good game plan. But we got the job done.”

Rodriguez closed as a minus-3500 betting favorite, according to DraftKings, while Cafu was a plus-1000 underdog. But Cafu fought a lot better fight than oddsmakers and Rodriguez believed he would.

Although Rodriguez outthrew and outlanded Cafu in every round, the latter was in the fight from the get-go.

Rodriguez, a 25-year-old southpaw slugger from San Antonio, Texas, strategically leveraged his superior footwork and feints to corner Cafu and concentrated on a dedicated body attack in between his offense targeted at the head.

Although he was getting marched down from corner to corner, Cafu earned Rodriguez’s respect by retaliating with well-timed counter right hands that connected.

The massively overlooked Cafu sported pink hair and was coming off a knockdown and career-best split decision win against former four-division champion Kosei Tanaka in Japan in October.

But he started withering from Rodriguez’s onslaught in Rounds 7, 8, and 9 once the pace picked up. After the ninth round, Cafu’s corner questioned if he could continue before the fight officially ended in the 10th.

“I knew he wasn’t going to be able to take my shots all night,” said Rodriguez. “I was a little bit surprised they stopped it. I thought he was going to keep going, but his corner knows him better than I do.

“This means everything. I am one step closer to being the undisputed champion. It goes to show you I am here to stay.”

Rodriguez now moves on to an undisputed title fight against WBA and IBF champion Fernando “Puma” Martinez (18-0, 9 KOs) on Nov. 22 in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, as part of a stacked card headlined by David Benavidez-Anthony Yarde that was announced earlier this month.

Cafu joins the growing hit list for Rodriguez, The Ring’s No. 7-ranked pound-for-pound fighter. Over the last three years, Rodriguez has beaten Juan Francisco Estrada, Sunny Edwards, Srisaket Sor Rungvisai and Carlos Cuadras across eight world title fights to become a two-division champion.

In addition to the matchup against Martinez, Rodriguez also wants to climb weight classes to face Japanese juggernauts Naoya Inoue and Junto Nakatani.