GLENDALE, Ariz. – Jaime Munguia has been in tight fights before, sweating over scorecards and fretting in the center of the ring, waiting for the referee to raise his hand.

As Friday’s super middleweight bout against Canadian Erik Bazinyan began to look more and more like the others, Munguia flipped the script by throwing his fists at his opponent.

Thanks to the continuous barrage of blows that sent Bazinyan reeling from one side of the ring to the other, Munguia was able to remove any tension from the past and begin a new chapter in his career by knocking out Bazinyan 2 minutes and 36 seconds into the 10th round.

“It was a fight I had to dig into to win. I had to be smart and break him,” Munguia said. “In the 10th, I came out with everything.”

Following a defeat in a Cinco de Mayo weekend bout to Saul “Canelo” Alvarez, the 27-year-old Munguia (44-1, 35 KOs) made a big move toward free agency after fighting under the Top Rank banner following a longtime junior middleweight titleholder until the setback at Canelo.

“He’s going to make the decision,” Munguia’s Mexican promoter Fernando Beltran told BoxingScene minutes after the bout.

Top Rank President Todd duBoef, whose company has expressed interest and plans to retain Munguia, said he was impressed by both the enthusiasm of the 6,000-plus fans packed into the Desert Diamond Arena and the way Munguia handled the challenge of Bazinyan (32-1-1).

“I thought he fought brilliantly for a couple of rounds, and a couple of rounds he let (Bazinyan) dictate the pace,” duBoef said. “And that’s all part of this next chapter for him. It’s a comeback. Like the ebb and flow of the fight … when he decided, ‘I’m going to fucking push it,’ he pulled it out. He proved he’s a guy who can finish, and he’s always photogenic.”

Munguia landed the heaviest blows on Bazinyan for three rounds. In the third round, the ball under the Canadian’s left eye began to swell and he pressed the action as Bazinyan looked for counter chances.

Munguia seemed willing to accept those punches as minor inconveniences to the more crippling heavy blows he was attempting to deliver. His continued strides forward in search of that damage brought the same kind of entertainment he created in the loss to Alvarez to this night.

But as Bazinyan’s counterattacks troubled Munguia in the fourth and fifth rounds, the match appeared to turn.

“I felt very comfortable and felt good – he was frustrated,” Bazinyan said. “He was not comfortable with my counterpunches.”

Munguia focused on bodywork in the sixth round and then pushed Bazinyan back into Munguia’s corner with an extended combination, using hard right hands.

But Bazinyan responded to the pain by banging his gloves together and supporting Munguia with a right hand to the face.

New Munguia trainer Erik Morales admitted to duBoef that he was influenced by his own fighting days – “the judges love me” – when he instructed Munguia to take it easy in the ninth round and give it his all in the 10th.

The strategy was sublime and showed that Munguia is a powerful force who can destroy this top five super middleweight boxer and advance his career while top contenders such as Top Rank’s Christian Mbilli, Diego Pacheco and recent Alvarez opponents Caleb Plant and Edgar Berlanga await him.

“This was a great experience… (those participants) are also capable of fighting big wars,” Munguia said.