Middleweight standout Daniel Jacobs scored a fifth-round stoppage against Jarrod Fletcher on the undercard of the Danny Garcia-Rod Salka fight on Saturday at Barclays Center in Brooklyn, N.Y.

Jacobs (28-1, 25 knockouts), a 27-year-old Brooklyn native, thrilled his hometown fans by repeatedly rocking Fletcher in the opening round after stunning him with a short hook on the inside and doing so again in the final minute of Round 4 before finishing the 30-year-old Australian in the final seconds of Round 5. Fletcher (18-2, 10 KOs) was overwhelmed and dropped into the ropes near a neutral corner where referee Michael Griffin waved the bout off at 2:58 of the round.

The victory was especially sweet for Jacobs, who was diagnosed with Osteosarcoma — a life-threatening form of bone cancer that left him partially paralyzed for many months in 2011. Jacobs overcame the illness after undergoing surgery to remove softball-sized tumor that was wrapped around his spine, returned to the sport and won his sixth bout in a row with the Fletcher stoppage.

Jacobs also won the “regular” version of the WBA’s middleweight title, making him the first cancer survivor to be recognized as a world champion in boxing history.

[Editor’s note: THE RING and RingTV.com recognize the WBA’s “super” middleweight titleholder, Gennady Golovkin, as that sanctioning organization’s champion.]