Carlos Adames remained unbeaten as a middleweight, stopping a resilient Julian Williams in round 9 to maintain his foothold in the competitive middleweight division.

Adames (23-1, 18 knockouts) hurt Williams (28-4-1, 16 KOs) with a right hook before a follow-up attack compelled referee Mark Nelson to halt the bout at the 2:45 mark of an entertaining bout. The stoppage wasn’t without controversy as Williams, buzzed as he was, was beginning to fire back just at the time the referee intervened. The Williams camp protested vocally, with trainer Stephen “Breadman” Edwards calling it a “typical A-side stoppage.”

WOW 😱

Ref stops the fight in round 9 giving @BroncoAdames the TKO victory!#AdamesWilliams pic.twitter.com/5KQj03g5KV

— SHOWTIME Boxing (@ShowtimeBoxing) June 25, 2023

“I think it was a terrible stoppage, but what can I do?,” said Williams, echoing his trainer’s sentiment.

Unsurprisingly, Adames had a different perspective.

“I think the referee stopped it because [Williams] could have really got hurt,” said Adames.

“If I would’ve hit him with another one he probably would’ve gotten really hurt.”

The fight was a competitive, back-and-forth bout, though that wasn’t reflected in the judges’ scorecards, with one judge, the relatively inexperienced Raymundo Perez of Las Vegas, scoring it a shutout at 80-72 at the time of stoppage. The other two judges had it 78-74 and 77-74, both for Adames, who maintained his status as the WBC interim middleweight titleholder, which makes him the de facto next in line for the 160-pound belt currently held by Jermall Charlo.

.@Jrockboxing and his trainer @BreadmanBoxing had some strong words about the stoppage 😳#AdamesWilliams pic.twitter.com/dM1rqdbwCe

— SHOWTIME Boxing (@ShowtimeBoxing) June 25, 2023

Adames, 29, of Comendador, Dominican Republic knew he was in a fight early as the 33-year-old Williams, a former unified junior middleweight titleholder from Philadelphia, rocked him in the third with a straight right hand down the pipe.

Adames turned the fight around in the fourth as he swung away against Williams, who defended well with a tight guard but still took enough blows to prevent him from firing back. Williams took a gamble in the fifth, figuring that Adames may have emptied the gas tank with that attack, and began to sit down on left hook counters against the lowered guard of Adames.

Adames found the answer to pulling away from his opponent in the second half of the fight, as he switched from southpaw to orthodox, where he feels he punches hardest, and began targeting the body. The body work took away much of the movement that made Williams a difficult target to find, and set him up for the finish that came in the ninth round.

The ninth round was the most one-sided of the bout statistically, as Adames was credited with landing 25 of 74 punches to just 11 of 32 from Williams. In total, Adames had an edge in total connects and activity, landing 160 of 458 attempts (34.9 percent), according to CompuBox, while Williams landed 122 of 346 (35.5 percent) attempts.

The loss is the third in Williams’ last four bouts, while Adames has now won five straight since his lone defeat, a unanimous decision to Patrick Teixeira in 2019.

The next move for Adames remains unclear as Jermall Charlo, who who hasn’t defended his WBC middleweight belt in over two years, is expected to get a major fight opportunity against Canelo Alvarez in September.

“I’m a warrior, and I’m going to rest for a little bit and see what’s next,” said Adames.

The fight headlined a Showtime Championship Boxing broadcast.